BM  560  .L3  1895  c.2 
Lazarus,  Josephine,  1846 

1910. 
The  spirit  of  Judaism 


THE  SPIRIT  OF  JUDAISM. 


THE 


SPIRIT  OF  JUDAISM. 


BY 
JOSEPHINE  LAZARUS. 


NEW    YORK: 

DODD,  MEAD   AND   COMPANY. 

1895. 


Copyright,  1895, 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Co. 


John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

The  Jewish  Question 7 

The  Outlook  of  Judaism 28 

Judaism,  Old  and  New 70 

The  Claim  of  Judaism 101 

The  Task  of  Judaism 133 

Epilogue 192 


THE   SPIRIT   OF  JUDAISM. 


THE  JEWISH   QUESTION. 

'T^O  approach  the  Jewish  question  is 
■^  to  be  confronted  with  every  great 
question  of  the  day,  —  social,  pohtical, 
financial,  humanitarian,  national,  and 
religious.  Each  phase  should  be  treated 
by  an  expert  and  specialist,  for  in  each 
lies  a  deep,  urgent,  practical  problem 
which  requires  the  wisest  and  most  skilled 
handling ;  but,  however  discussed  or  dealt 
with,  there  is  one  point  of  view  which 
should  never  be  lost  sight  of,  —  namely, 
the  point  of  view  of  humanity.     All  other 


8  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 

standpoints  must  be  merged  or  held  in 
abeyance.  First  and  foremost,  we  must 
be  human  if  we  would  raise  our  voice 
on  so  human  a  theme,  involving  the 
lives  and  destinies  of  so  many  unhappy 
human  beings. 

It  is  a  sorry  spectacle  that  the  world 
presents  at  the  end  of  our  emancipated 
nineteenth  century,  — hundreds  and  thou- 
sands of  our  fellow-creatures,  men,  women, 
and  innocent  children,  driven  from  their 
homes,  helpless,  destitute,  and  distracted, 
flying  where  ?  whither  ?  No  one  knows, 
for  in  turn  each  nation  threatens  to  shut 
them  out  as  outcasts  and  pariahs. 

Who,  then,  are  these  alien  wretches, 
with  speech  unlike  our  own,  with  ways 
and  customs  peculiar  to  themselves  ;  and 
what  is  their  crime  ?  we  ask.  There  are 
those  who  will  tell  us  that  they  are  usu- 
rers, eating  the  flesh  and  grinding  the 
faces  of  the  poor ;  others  will  say  that 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION-.  9 

they  are  traitors,  plotting  against  tlieir 
sovereign  rulers;  others  will  call  them 
enemies  of  the  Christ ;  and  again  others 
will  lay  at  their  door  nameless  cruel 
charges  of  ignorant  fanaticism.  Their 
crime  is  legion,  and  yet  one  word  sums 
it  up,  —  they  are  Jews.  "  Hep  !  Hep  !  " 
It  is  an  old  battle-cry,  old  as  Christendom, 
but  it  rings  to-day  fresh  from  the  nations. 
Russia  leads  with  brute  violence,  sweep- 
ing them  from  the  soil ;  Germany  fol- 
lows with  lofty  phrases,  pulpit  and  paper 
warfare;  even  liberal  France  takes  the 
alarm  ;  and  occasionally  a  small  British 
voice  pipes  in  the  chorus,  ''  Christians, 
beware !  The  Jew  is  richer,  is  sharper 
than  you.  Look  to  your  interest  and 
your  purse.  Royalty  is  at  his  feet,  the 
stock  exchange  belongs  to  him,  and  the 
press  is  his  organ." 

But    in    justice   to   humanity   let   us 
hasten  to  add  that  there  is  another  side. 


10  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 

In  all  the  countries  we  have  named, 
Russia  perhaps  alone  excepted,  all  earnest 
and  right-minded  Christians,  no  less  than 
Jews,  are  aghast  at  the  sinister  revela- 
tions, and  are  doing  what  they  can  to 
stem  the  current  and  to  enter  their  pro- 
test against  so  barbarous  a  reaction.  But 
this  new  outbreak  of  hatred  and  antago- 
nism, after  centuries  of  progress  and  en- 
lightenment, is  a  phenomenon  so  startling 
that  it  calls  for  examination  more  search- 
ing, and  deeper  comprehension,  than  it 
generally  receives. 

Whether  the  tragic  history  of  the  Jews 
redounds  more  to  their  glory  and  mar- 
tyrdom than  to  the  honour  of  the  Chris- 
tians, is  not  the  point  which  will  throw 
any  special  light  upon  the  subject  just 
now ;  but  both  Jews  and  Christians  alike 
—  whoever  studies  with  impartiality  the 
annals  of  the  past  —  must  be  struck  with 
the  ever-recurring  features,  the  mask,  of 


THE  JEWISH   QUESTION.  11 

this  Ugly  monster  of  persecution,  grown 
so  familiar  through  the  ages.  History 
seems  to  move  backward  or  in  a  circle ; 
here  are  the  same  grievances  as  in  the 
days  of  the  CaBsars,  the  same  jealous  mis- 
trust and  animosity,  the  same  cruel  and 
exaggerated  retribution.  The  classic 
writers  of  pagan  antiquity  are  full  of 
the  most  scornful  and  contemptuous 
references.  A  fair-minded  writer  of  to- 
day ^  says  of  the  Jew :  — 

"  Even  his  virtues  are  of  the  unsym- 
pathetic sort.  Temperate,  uniformly 
chaste  and  industrious,  a  faithful  hus- 
band and  marvellously  good  father,  a 
peaceful  and  law-abiding  citizen  in  what- 
ever country  he  may  be,  yet  no  one 
wants  him  as  a  settler;  and  the  mis- 
eries of  the  Russian  Jew  had  to  mount 
up  in  the  scale  until  they  suggested  the 

1  Harold  Frederic,  iu  the  "  Times"  of  October  12, 
1891. 


12  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 

horrors  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition  before 
the  world  really  took  much  interest." 

To  seek  for  the  origin  and  explanation 
of  so  radical  an  incompatibility  would 
be  wellnigh  a  hopeless  task ;  but  much 
more  useful  and  important  would  be  to 
draw  what  lesson  we  could  for  the  future, 
which  would  help  toward  the  solution, 
however  distant,  of  so  complicated  and 
grievous  a  problem. 

Of  all  the  schemes  of  colonisation,  the 
one  that  appeals  most  to  the  imagination 
is  the  return  to  Palestine.  On  the  spot 
where  they  once  were  a  great  nation,  and 
amid  surroundings  that  seem  better  suited 
to  their  traditions  and  highest  destiny 
than  our  Western  conditions,  they  might 
again  put  forth  some  great  spiritual  idea, 
some  new  blossoming  of  the  genius  which 
is  surely  theirs.  But  the  object  of  the 
present  study  is  not  to  offer  any  sugges- 
tion or  panacea,  but  rather,  if  possible, 


THE  JEWISH   QUESTION.  13 

to  lift  the  subject  upon  a  broader  plane ; 
to  rise  for  the  moment  above  the  human 
drama  of  strife  and  suffering  which  is 
being  enacted,  into  the  region  of  pure 
ideas  and  principles,  —  for  it  is  here 
that  the  warfare  of  Israel  is  truly  accom- 
plished, —  and  to  discover,  if  we  may, 
the  spiritual  facts  and  forces  that  are  at 
play,  the  ultimate  result  to  which  they 
point,  and  the  working  of  divine  and 
eternal  truth  through  so  much  human 
error  and  sacrifice. 

And  in  endeavouring  to  do  this,  it  is 
to  the  Jews  rather  than  to  the  Christians 
that  we  would  address  ourselves,  —  to 
the  advanced  and  liberated  Jews  of 
Europe  and  America ;  for  it  is  with  them 
that  a  great  responsibility  rests,  and  a 
great  opportunity.  Thoroughly  aroused 
to  the  material  exio-encies  of  the  situa- 
tion,  collectively  and  individually  giving 
their  best  energies,  spending  their  money 


14  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 

like  water,  the  reproach  can  never  be 
brought  against  the  Jew  that  he  has 
failed  to  respond  to  the  cry  of  his  brother 
in  distress,  or  that  prosperity  has  made 
him  forget  the  endless  adversity  of  his 
race.  But  in  providing  a  home  for  his 
hapless  comrade,  in  crowding  him  into 
the  overcrowded  ranks  of  the  toiling 
masses,  and  initiating  him  into  the  fierce 
struggle  of  modern  selfishness,  has  he 
done  all  his  duty?  Or  even  in  holding 
out  the  hand  of  religious  fellowship,  and 
helping  him  to  the  full  and  free  exercise 
of  the  immemorial  customs  and  tradi- 
tions of  his  race,  is  the  free,  untram- 
melled Israelite  doing  the  best  and  the 
highest  that  his  advantages  and  oppor- 
tunities can  suggest  for  this  belated  new- 
comer, who  emerges,  as  it  were,  out  of 
the  Middle  Ages  into  the  bright  light  of 
a  new  day,  and  the  broad  rushing  stream 
of   Western   ideas  ?      And   in    order   to 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION.  15 

answer  these  questions,  we  must  en- 
deavour, if  possible,  clearly  to  under- 
stand the  true  status  of  the  Jew  in  modern 
civilisation  :  the  moral  and  material  con- 
ditions under  which  he  is  allowed  to 
advance ;  the  ideals  and  aims  which  he 
sets  for  himself,  —  in  other  words,  the 
true  import  and  content  of  modern  Ju- 
daism under  its  most  favourable  circum- 
stances and  environment. 

Broadly  speaking,  we  come  upon  three 
classes  of  Jews  in  the  community,  some- 
times sharply  defined,  and  again  merging 
into  one  another. 

First,  there  is  the  remnant  of  orthodox 
Jews,  mostly  of  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
descent,  but  with  greatly  enlarged  contin- 
gent now  of  Russian  and  Polish  immigra- 
tion, who  cling  without  shadow  of  turning 
to  the  primeval  faith,  strictly  observing 
the  rigid  form  of  the  Sabbath,  the  whole 
dietary  regime,   every  text  of  the  law, 


16  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION, 

every  feast  and  every  fast  that  commem- 
orates a  religious  or  a  national  event. 
If  we  go  into  the  most  modern  of  their 
synagogues  we  shall  find  it  exactly  as  in 
the  ancient  days,  —  the  entrance  always 
facing  the  east ;  the  reader's  desk  in  the 
middle,  with  its  tall  candlesticks ;  the 
perpetual  lamp  burning  before  the  taber- 
nacle where  the  scrolls  of  the  law  are 
contained,  wrapped  in  their  silken 
mantles  and  overtopped  with  their  silvery 
tinkling  bells;  the  men  and  women 
seated  apart,  —  the  women  in  their  upper 
gallery,  the  men  with  covered  head,  and 
over  their  shoulders  the  white  and  blue- 
bordered  silken  scarfs,  with  fringes 
knotted  according  to  custom  to  represent 
the  Hebrew  characters  of  the  law ;  the 
service  entirely  in  Hebrew,  chanted  by 
the  reader  with  response  by  the  congre- 
gation, and  occasionally  a  chorus  of  male 
voices.    No  need  to  question  these  vener- 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION.  17 

able  believers.  Their  faith  is  as  old  as 
Moses,  and  their  code,  the  one  he  formu- 
lated four  thousand  years  ago,  elaborated 
into  a  system  more  complete  than  any- 
thing that  has  ever  been  devised,  a  subtle 
interweaving  of  precept  and  practice  so 
that  every  action  of  the  life  is  regulated 
according  to  some  Levitical  command, 
and  every  command  is  externalised  into 
some  outward  fact  and  observance.  In 
the  eyes  of  such  conformists  Judaism  is 
a  sacred  trust,  at  once  national,  religious, 
and  ancestral,  to  be  handed  down  intact 
from  generation  to  generation  ;  and  the 
Jews  are  a  special,  consecrated  race, 
favoured  and  chosen  of  God  to  be  the 
bearers  of  his  Word  unto  men. 

Breaking  away  from  this  extreme  for- 
malism, with  its  excessive  and  difficult 
minutice,  w^e  find  the  second  class,  —  the 
reform  Jews,  who  constitute  an  always 
increasing   body,    being    constantly    re- 


18  THE  JEWISH   QUESTION. 

cruited  from  the  orthodox  ranks.  Still 
following  the  traditions,  observing  the 
seventh  day  as  the  Sabbath,  the  solemn 
fast,  and  all  the  great  holidays,  they  have 
generally  emancipated  themselves  from 
much  of  the  ceremonial  law,  especially 
the  dietary  restrictions,  and  the  whole 
code  and  practice  of  life  have  more  scope 
and  freedom.  In  the  synagogue  —  or 
temple,  as  they  prefer  to  call  it  —  the 
service  is  still  for  the  most  part  in 
Hebrew  ;  but  there  is  an  organ  and  choir, 
and  men  and  ^vomen  ,  sit  together,  the 
men  with  uncovered  heads.  Here  again 
the  principles  are  not  difficult  to  define, 
although  somewhat  less  stable  and  con- 
sistent, and  opening  the  way  to  the  tliird 
class,  which  reveals  elements  more  com- 
plex and  anomalous,  and  horizons  in- 
finitely larger  but  more  vague. 

And  in  regard  to  this  third  class  we 
cannot  do  better  than  freely  quote  from  the 


THE  JEWISH   QUESTION.  19 

pages  of  the  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes"  ^ 
by  Leroy  Beaulieu,  whose  masterly  and 
comprehensive  survey  of  the  whole 
subject  has  nowhere  been  equalled.  Re- 
jecting, he  says,  as  effete  and  outworn, 
the  legal  and  ritualistic  tradition,  the 
Jews  of  this  class  fasten  upon  the  race 
tradition,  the  Messianic  hope,  and  belief 
in  the  destiny  of  Israel  again  to  give  a 
religion  to  the  world,  "  but  this  time  a 
religion  without  inconvenient  customs 
or  unreasonable  dogma,  without  miracles 
or  any  mysteries."  In  this  case,  how- 
ever, so  radical  and  complete  is  the  sep- 
aration from  their  orthodox  co-religionists 
that  the  very  corner-stone  of  the  one 
becom.es  the  stumbling-block  in  the  eyes 
of  the  others,  the  obstacle  which  in  all 
ages  has  prevented  Judaism  from  arriv- 
ing at  its  legitimate  and  universal  su- 
premacy.    "Break    your    chains,"    say 

1  For  February  15,  May  1,  and  July  15,  1891. 


20  THE  JEWISH   QUESTION. 

these  disciples  of  progress.  "  Proclaim 
the  Unity  of  God,  the  sanctity  of  the 
moral  law  ;  and  you  have  a  faith  at  once 
human  and  divine,  both  large  and  simple 
enough  to  satisfy  all  mankind." 

A  beautiful  dream,  says  Leroy  Beaulieu, 
and  entirely  characteristic  of  the  race. 
But  will  it  truly  satisfy  any  one,  —  above 
all,  their  brethren  the  Jews  themselves, 
who  look  upon  their  very  existence  as  con- 
ditioned upon  precisely  the  things  they 
are  asked  to  give  up  ?  Without  rites, 
without  doo-ma  and  formal  cult,  can  thev 
have  a  religion  at  all  ?  he  asks ;  can  they 
have  Judaism,  at  all  events  ?  What 
remains  when  all  outward  form  and 
semblance  has  departed  from  that  which 
was  built  and  buttressed  upon  outward 
form  ?  What  substance,  what  essence, 
is  left  of  the  Judaic  idea,  save  an  abstract 
and  far-away  deism,  or  a  humanitarianism 
more  delusive  still,  leading  down  the 
banal  slidino:-scale  of  unbelief  ? 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION.  21 

Sucli  a  question  is  fully  justified  when 
we  see  foremost  among  the  ranks  of 
agnosticism,  scepticism,  and  materialism 
so  large  a  preponderance  of  Jews  that 
this  too  is  brought  in  reproach  against 
them.  For  there  is  no  more  noteworthy 
and  singular  fact  in  the  whole  history 
of  this  singular  people  than  the  constant 
and  uniform  recurrence  of  the  two  oppo- 
site types,  —  the  extremes  of  idealism  and 
materialism,  —  which  the  race  presents. 
While  their  whole  existence  and  survival 
are  based  upon  a  spiritual  idea,  there  is 
no  people  whose  kingdom  is  so  absolutely 
of  this  world,  and  who  are  so  prone,  so 
apt,  so  eager,  to  take  advantage  of  all 
its  opportunities. 

In  the  face  of  all  these  contradictions, 
where,  then,  shall  we  find  the  rallying- 
point,  where  the  real  unity,  the  central 
sun  which  shall  illumine  not  Judaism 
alone,  but   all   mankind  ?     Not   for   an 


22  THE  JEWISH   QUESTION. 

instant  do  we  doubt  that  each  of  the 
sects  we  have  described  has  vitality 
enough  to  survive  for  long  years  to  come  ; 
but  it  can  survive  only  as  a  sect,  with 
all  the  limitations  and  disabilities  that 
the  name  involves.  And  the  world  is 
breaking  free  from  these  narrow  lines. 
Everywhere  there  are  signs  of  a  spiritual 
awakening  and  expansion  which  every 
religion  must  meet  and  fulfil,  or  be  found 
wanting.  Even  science  leads  now  to  the 
portals  of  "  The  Unknown  God."  Chris- 
tianity is  undergoing  a  profound  modi- 
fication, and  a  divine  spark  still  lingers 
in  Judaism. 

But  in  order  to  kindle  this  into  a  flame, 
a  deeper  current  is  needed,  a  more  glow- 
ing impulse,  and  that  quickening  breath 
of  the  spirit  which  does  not  seem  to 
animate  modern  Jewish  life  and  thought. 
It  is  not  enough  to  rehearse  the  glories 
of  the  past,  nor  to  point  to  names,  dis- 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION.  23 

tinguished  though  they  be  in  the  world 
of  to-day.  The  need  of  Israel  in  the 
present  and  its  true  greatness  in  the  past 
consist  in  spiritual  leadership.  Above 
tlie  inert  mass,  the  dull  crowd  of  Phari- 
sees and  Scribes  dwelling  within  the  life- 
less body  of  the  Law,  have  arisen  the 
divinely  gifted  men,  the  prophets  and 
seers  of  the  world,  who  saw  God  and 
spoke  face  to  face  with  him.  From 
Abraham  to  St.  Paul  they  were  men  who 
threw  off  the  idolatries  and  superstitions 
of  the  times,  the  bondage  of  the  letter, 
and  proclaimed  the  inner,  not  the  outer, 
law,  —  the  spirit,  not  the  form.  For  they 
knew  the  Presence  ;  '^  the  burden  of  the 
valley  of  vision  "  lay  upon  them. 

And  this  is  the  lack  with  the  Judaism 
of  our  day,  —  the  inward  living  voice,  the 
heaven-sent  message.  Loyal  to  the  word, 
to  the  faith  and  God  of  their  fathers 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob,  they  have 


24  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 

nailed  the  Law  upon  the  door-posts,  and 
bound  it  as  a  sign  upon  the  brow  and 
hands,  and  fringed  their  garments  with 
it.  More  than  this,  they  have  kept  the 
Commandments,  and  preserved  themselves 
a  pure  and  moral  race.  But  even  as  a 
man  may  bestow  all  his  goods  to  feed 
the  poor,  and  give  his  body  to  be  burned, 
and  yet  may  not  have  charity,  so  a  man 
may  keep  the  Law  and  the  Command- 
ments and  give  his  body  to  be  burned, 
and  yet  not  have  religion. 

'^Who  is  blind  but  my  servant;  or 
deaf  as  my  messenger  that  I  sent  ?  Who 
is  blind  as  he  that  is  perfect,  and  blind 
as  the  Lord's  servant? 

"Seeing  many  things,  but  thou  ob- 
servest  not ;  opening  the  ears,  but  he 
heareth  not." 

For  religion  is  not  alone  a  doing,  but 
a  being,  a  quality  of  soul,  a  motive  power 
and  principle.   It  is  the  hidden  force  which 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION.  25 

binds  the  seen  to  the  unseen,  the  finite 
to  the  infinite,  the  human  to  the  divine; 
which  solves  and  fuses  the  whole  nature 
of  man,  lifting  him  beyond  the  bounda- 
ries of  time  and  space,  the  illusions  of 
matter  and  sense,  into  the  realm  of  true 
and  imperishable  being.  To  enter  this 
realm  it  is  not  necessary  to  pass  away 
from  earth,  but  simply  to  be  freed  from 
earthly  considerations  and  limitations, 
to  rise  above  earthly  prizes  and  rewards, 
and  to  come  into  spiritual  possession; 
for  this  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  al- 
though we  may  be  still  upon  earth,  we 
may  suffer,  and  even  fall  into  sin.  But, 
dwelling  in  darkness  and  in  the  shadow 
of  death,  we  may  yet  see  light  and  life. 

Deep  in  the  heart  of  Judaism  is  en- 
shrined a  sacred,  an  immortal  word,  — 
duty,  —  which  makes  of  man  a  moral 
being,  and  links  him  to  the  moral  source 
of  the  universe.     Deep  in  the  heart  of 


26  THE  JEWISH  QUESTION. 

Christianity  is  enshrined  a  sacred  and 
immortal  word,  —  love,  —  which  makes 
of  man  a  spiritual  being,  and  links  him 
to  the  divine  source  of  all  life.  Human- 
ity needs  both  these  words  in  order  to 
become  the  perfect  creation  it  was  meant 
to  be.  The  one  gives  the  conscience,  the 
other  the  hearty  of  mankind  ;  the  one  is 
the  masculine,  the  other  the  feminine, 
element  of  the  world.  Judaism  gives  the 
Ten  Commandments,  and  Christianity 
the  Beatitudes ;  but  only  the  two  to- 
gether can  yield  the  perfect  ideal,  —  the 
love  that  is  simply  the  highest  duty,  and 
duty  that  is  lost  in  love. 

And  in  order  to  come  into  this  closer, 
higher  union,  into  the  faith  which  makes 
humanity  whole,  and  not  a  thing  of  parts, 
and  the  truth  which  makes  men  free,  fixed 
and  formal  codes  must  disappear;  the 
outer  framework  of  history  and  theology 
must  fall  away,  and  spirit  be  left  free  to 


THE  JEWISH  QUESTION,  27 

seek  Spirit.  Then,  and  then  only,  will 
life  have  its  whole  meaning,  as  part  of  a 
larger  life  whose  beginning  and  end  are 
hidden  from  mortal  vision.  Eeligion 
will  have  its  full  sway,  and  yet  there 
will  be  none  who  persecute  and  none 
who  are  persecuted ;  "  for  the  earth  shall 
be  full  of  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord, 
as  the  waters  cover  the  sea." 

January,  1892. 


^THE  OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

nPHE  nineteenth  century  has  had  its 
surprises.  The  position  of  the  Jew 
to-day  is  one  of  these,  both  for  the  Jew 
himself  and  for  most  enhghtened  Chris- 
tians. There  were  certain  facts  we  thought 
forever  laid  at  rest,  certain  conditions  and 
contingencies  that  could  never  confront 
us  again,  certain  war-cries  that  could  not 
be  raised.  In  this  last  decade  of  our 
civilisation,  however,  we  have  been 
rudely  awakened  from  our  false  dream  of 
security  —  it  may  be  to  a  higher  calling 
and  destiny  than  we  had  yet  foreseen. 

I  do  not  wish  to  emphasise  the  painful 
facts  by  dwelling  on  them,  or  even  point- 
ing  them   out.      We  are   all   aware  of 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  29 

tliem,  and  whenever  Jews  and  Chris- 
tians can  come  together  on  equal  terms, 
ignoring  difference  and  opposition  and 
injury,  it  is  well  that  they  should  do  so. 
At  the  same  time  we  must  not  shut  our 
eyes,  nor,  like  the  ostrich,  bury  our  head 
in  the  sand.  The  situation,  which  is  so 
grave  a  one,  must  be  bravely  and  hon- 
estly faced,  the  crisis  met,  the  problem 
frankly  stated  in  all  its  bearings,  so  that 
the  whole  truth  may  be  brought  to  light, 
if  possible.  We  are  a  little  apt  to  look 
on  one  side  only  of  the  shield,  especially 
when  our  sense  of  justice  and  humanity 
is  stung,  and  the  cry  of  the  oppressed 
and  persecuted  —  our  brothers  —  rings 
in  our  ears. 

As  we  all  know,  the  effect  of  persecu- 
tion is  to  strengthen  solidarity.  The 
Jew  who  never  was  a  Jew  before  be- 
comes one  when  the  vital  spot  is 
touched,    "  the    Jew "    is    thrust    upon 


30  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM, 

him,  whether  he  would  or  not,  and 
made  an  msult  and  reproach.  When 
we  are  attacked  as  Jews  we  do  not 
strike  back  angrily,  but  we  coil  up  in 
our  shell  of  Judaism  and  intrench  our- 
selves more  strongly  than  before. 

Thrown  back  constantly  upon  itself, 
Judaism  thus  remains  to  a  great  extent 
a  separate  factor,  an  isolated  and  uncom- 
bined  element  in  modern  culture.  The 
Jews  themselves,  both  from  natural  habit 
and  force  of  circumstance,  have  been  ac- 
customed to  dwell  along  their  own  lines 
of  thought  and  life,  absorbed  in  their 
own  point  of  view,  almost  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  outside  opinion.  Indeed,  it  is 
this  power  of  concentration  in  their  own 
pursuits  that  insures  their  success  in 
most  things  they  set  out  to  do.  They 
have  been  content  for  the  most  part  to 
guard  the  truth  they  hold,  rather  than 
spread  it  or  even  thoroughly  weigh  it  in 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM,  31 

the  scale  along  with  other  truth  in  the 
world.  In  spite  of  individual  excep- 
tions, of  outward  affiliation,  and  the  iden- 
tification of  external  interests  and  occu- 
pation, the  Jews  as  a  body  have  not 
generally  made  an  integral  part  of  the 
community  in  which  they  live.  The  life 
flows  side  by  side,  but  does  not  mingle 
at  its  source ;  and  they  are  forced  to  take 
refuge  in  their  historic  past  and  familiar 
race-traditions  from  an  alien  world 
which  does  not  wholly  accept  or  under- 
stand them,  and  where  they  are  not 
quite  at  home. 

At  the  same  time,  amid  favourable  sur- 
roundings and  easy  circumstance,  many 
of  us  had  ceased  to  take  it  very  deeply 
or  seriously  that  we  were  Jews.  We  had 
grown  to  look  upon  it  merely  as  an 
accident  of  birth,  for  which  we  were  not 
called  upon  to  make  any  sacrifice,  and 
which    in    our    ordinary   life    and   daily 


32  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

transactions  with  our  fellow-men  we 
tried  to  ignore,  so  as  to  make  ourselves 
as  much  as  possible  like  our  neighbours, 
neither  better  nor  w^orse  than  the  people 
around  us.  But  wdth  a  painful  shock  we 
are  suddenly  made  aware  of  it  as  a  det- 
riment, and  we  shrink  at  once  back 
into  ourselves,  hurt  in  our  most  sensitive 
point,  our  pride  wounded  to  the  quick, 
our  most  sacred  feelings,  as  we  believe, 
outraged  and  trampled  upon. 

But  our  very  attitude  proves  that 
something  is  wrong  with  us.  Persecu- 
tion does  not  touch  us  ;  we  do  not  feel 
it  when  we  have  an  idea  large  enough 
and  close  enough  to  our  hearts  to  sus- 
tain and  console  us.  The  martyrs  of  old 
did  not  feel  the  fires  of  the  stake,  the 
arrows  that  pierced  their  flesh.  The 
Jews  of  the  olden  time  danced  to  their 
death  with  praise  and  song  and  joyful 
shouts  of  Hallelujah.     They  were  will- 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  33 

ing  to  die  for  that  which  was  their  life 
and  more  than  their  life  to  them. 

But  the  martyrdom  of  the  present  day 
is  a  strange  and  novel  one,  almost  a 
sordid  one,  that  has  no  grace  or  glory 
about  it,  and  of  which  we  are  not  proud. 
We  have  not  chosen,  and  perhaps  would 
not  choose  it.  Many  of  us  scarcely 
know  the  cause  for  which  we  suffer,  and 
therefore  we  feel  every  pang,  every  cut 
of  the  lash.  For  our  own  sake,  then, 
and  still  more  perhaps  for  those  who 
come  after  us  and  to  whom  we  bequeath 
our  Judaism,  it  behooves  us  to  find  out 
just  what  it  means  to  us,  and  what  it 
holds  for  us  to  live  by.  In  other  words, 
what  is  the  content  and  significance  of 
modern  Judaism  in  the  world  to-day, 
not  only  for  us  personally  as  Jews,  but 
for  the  world  at  large  ?  What  power 
has  it  as  a  spiritual  influence  ?  And  as 
such,  w^hat  is  its   share  or  part  in  the 

3 


34  THE  OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

large  life  of  humanity,  in  the  broad  cur- 
rent and  movement  of  the  time  ?  What 
actuality  has  it,  and  what  possible  un- 
foldment  in  the  future? 

And  as  we  shall  very  soon  discover,  it  is 
much  easier  to  ask  these  questions  than 
to  answer  them.  Indeed,  no  sooner  have 
we  put  them  than  we  are  at  once  con- 
fronted with  every  phase  of  sentiment, 
every  shade  and  variety  of  opinion.  We 
sweep  the  whole  gamut  of  modern  rest- 
less thought,  of  shifting  beliefs  and  un- 
belief, from  the  depths  of  superstition, 
as  well  as  of  scepticism  and  material- 
ism, to  the  cold  heights  of  agnosticism ; 
from  the  most  rigid  and  uncompromising 
formalism,  or  a  sincere  piety,  to  a  human- 
itarianism  so  broad  that  it  has  almost 
eliminated  God,  or  a  deism  so  vast  and 
distant  that  it  has  almost  eliminated 
humanity. 

Nothing   is   more   curious    than    this 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.  35 

range  and  diversity  of  conviction  from 
a  centre  of  unity ;  for  the  Jewish  idea 
survives  through  every  contradiction, 
as  the  race,  the  type,  persists  through 
every  modification  of  climate  and  lo- 
cality, and  every  varying  nationality. 
Clear  and  distinct,  we  can  trace  it 
through  history ;  and  as  the  present  can 
best  be  read  by  the  light  of  the  past, 
I  should  like  briefly  to  review  the  ideas 
on  which  our  existence  is  based  and  our 
identity  sustained. 

What  an  endless  perspective  !  Age 
after  age  unrolls,  nations  appear  and 
disappear,  and  still  we  follow  and  find 
them.  Back  to  the  very  morning  of 
time,  before  the  primal  mists  had  lifted 
from  the  w^orld,  while  yet  there  were 
giants  in  the  earth,  and  the  sons  of  God 
minp;led  with  the  daug-hters  of  men,  we 
come  upon  their  dim  and  mythical  be- 
ginnings, —  a    tribe    of    wanderers    in 


36  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

Eastern  lands^  roaming  beside  the  water- 
ways, feeding  their  flocks  upon  the  hill- 
sides, leading  their  camels  across  the 
lonely  desert  wastes,  and  pitching  their 
tents  beneath  the  high  star-studded 
skies;  from  the  first  a  people  much 
alone  with  their  own  souls  and  Nature, 
brought  to  face  the  Infinite,  self-centred, 
brooding,  and  conscious  of  a  something, 
they  knew  not  what,  —  a  Power  not 
themselves,  —  that  led  their  steps  and 
walked  and  talked  with  men. 

Already  in  those  earliest  days  great 
types  loom  up  among  them,  —  the  patri- 
archal leaders,  large,  tribal,  composite 
figures  rather  than  actual  persons,  and 
yet  touched  with  human  traits  and  per- 
sonality, moving  about  in  pastoral  and 
domestic  scenes;  men  already,  in  their 
own  crude  way,  pre-occnpied  of  God 
and  His  dealings  with  themselves  and 
w^ith  the  world. 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.         37 

Upon  a  background  of  myth,  and  yet 
in  a  sense  how  bold,  how  clear  stands 
Moses,  the  man  of  God,  who  saw  the 
world  aflame  with  Deity,  —  the  burning 
bush,  the  flaming  mountain-top,  the  fiery 
cloud,  —  leading  his  people  from  captiv- 
ity, and  who  heard  pronounced  the  divine 
and  everlasting  name,  the  unpronounce- 
able, the  ineffable  I  Am ! 

In  Moses,  above  all,  whether  we  look 
upon  him  as  semi-historic  or  a  purely 
symbolic  figure,  the  genius  of  the  Hebrew 
race  is  typified,  the  fundamental  note  of 
Judaism  is  struck,  —  the  Word  that  rings 
forever  after  through  the  ages,  which  is 
the  Law  spoken  by  God  Himself,  with 
trumpet  sound,  midst  thunderings  and 
lightning   from   heaven. 

Whatever  of  true  or  false,  of  fact  or 
legend,  hangs  about  it,  we  have  in  the 
Mosaic  conception  the  moral  ideal  of  the 
Hebrews,  a  code  divinely  sanctioned  and 


38  THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

ordained;  the  absolute  imperative  of  duty, 
a  transcendent  law  laid  upon  man,  which 
he  must  perforce  obey  in  order  that  he  may 
live.  ''  Thou  shalt,"  "  Thou  shalt  not," 
hedges  him  round  on  every  side,  —  now  as 
moral  obligation,  and  again  as  ceremonial 
or  legal  ordinance,  —  and  becomes  the  bul- 
wark of  the  faith  through  centuries  of 
greatness,  centuries  of  darkness  and  hu- 
miliation. Armed  with  this  Word,  as 
with  the  sword  of  the  Most  High,  they 
go  forth  to  conquer  and  overspread  the 
land.  Jehovah  is  always  there,  behind 
the  scenes,  the  Deus  ex  Machina,  their 
own  special  god,  who  has  chosen  them 
for  his  own  special  people,  guiding  and 
prompting  them.  It  is  always  his  right 
hand  that  doeth  valiantly  and  is  exalted 
when  Israel  triumphs,  for  he  cares  only 
for  Israel.  It  is  he  who  smites  great 
kings,  Israel's  enemies,  and  slays  them, 
for  his  mercy  endureth  forever,  and  who 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  39 

gives  their  land  for  an  heritage  to  his 
people. 

Amid  a  cloud  of  wars,  Jehovah's  sacred 
wars,  with  shadowy  hosts  and  chieftains, 
the  scattered  clans  unite,  the  kingdom 
forms,  and  we  have  the  dawn  of  history. 
Jerusalem  is  founded,  at  once  a  strong- 
hold and  a  sanctuary,  and  the  temple 
built.  The  national  and  religious  life 
grow  as  one  growth,  knitting  themselves 
together  and  mutually  strengthening  and 
upholding  one  another.  Then  the  splen- 
dours of  Solomon's  reign,  the  palace  with 
royal  state,  and,  above  all,  the  ever-grow- 
ing magnificence  of  the  temple  service, 
with  more  and  more  sumptuous  rites  and 
costly  offerings,  the  priesthood,  and  all 
the  paraphernalia  of  worship. 

But  the  true  greatness  of  Israel  was 
never  to  consist  in  outward  greatness, 
nor  in  the  materialising  of  any  of  its 
ideas,  either  in  the  religious  or  the  secu- 


40  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

lar  life,  but  wholly  in  the  inner  impulse 
and  activity,  the  spiritual  impetus  which 
was  now  shaping  itself  into  prophetism. 
And  here  we  strike  the  second  chord, 
that  other  source  and  spring  of  Israel's 
life,  which  still  yields  living  waters.  In 
Hebrew  prophecy  we  have  no  crumbling 
monument  of  perishable  stone,  the  silent 
witness  of  a  past  that  is  dead  and  gone, 
but  the  quickening  breath  of  the  spirit 
itself,  the  words  that  live  and  burn,  the 
something  that  is  still  alive  and  life- 
giving,  because  it  holds  the  soul  of  a 
people,  the  spirit  that  cannot  die. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise  at  what 
an  early  date  this  great  movement  had 
its  rise ;  already  a  thousand  years  before 
Christ  we  have  the  episode  of  Nathan 
before  David,  pointing  the  parable  and 
laying  his  moral  judgment  upon  the 
king  himself,  —  '^' Thou  art  the  man." 
And  again,  enveloped  in  legendary  clouds, 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.  41 

the  apocalyptic  figure  of  Elijah,  and  the 
grand  prophetic  drama  with  its  splendid 
accessories  and  scenery,  —  the  whirlwind 
and  the  earthquake,  and  the  still,  small 
voice. 

I  have  said  that  the  true  glory  of 
Israel  did  not  consist  in  any  external 
and  material  embodying;  and  yet  in  a 
sense  this  was  the  stimulus  and  exciting 
cause,  for  it  was  in  reaction  against  it 
that  the  Prophets  uttered  their  ringing 
words  and  passionate  appeal.  Theirs 
was  the  clearer  vision  that  pierced  below 
the  surface  and  penetrated  to  the  hidden 
meaning,  the  moral  and  spiritual  inter- 
pretation of  the  Law,  in  contrast  w^ith 
its  outer  sense.  Thus  their  splendid 
outbursts :  — 

'^  I  hate,  T  despise  your  feast  days. 
.  .  .  Though  ye  offer  me  your  burnt 
offerings  and  your  meat  offerings,  I  will 
not  accept  them.  .  .  .  Take  thou  away 


42  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

from  me  the  noise  of  tliy  songs,  for  I 
will  not  hear  the  melody  of  thy  viols. 
But  let  judgment  run  down  as  waters, 
and  righteousness  as  a  mighty  stream." 
Throughout  their  history  we  find  that 
the  Jews  as  a  nation  have  been  the  "  God- 
intoxicated  "  race,  intent  upon  the  prob- 
lem of  understanding  Him  and  His  ways 
with  them,  His  rulings  of  their  destiny. 
With  this  idea,  whether  in  a  high  form 
or  a  low,  in  spiritual  or  material  fashion, 
their  whole  existence  has  been  identified. 
But  it  is  the  Prophets  above  all  in  whom 
it  has  been  concentrated  and  embodied 
in  its  greatest  intensity.  For  them  but 
one  motive-power  existed,  but  one  source 
and  goal  of  action.  In  their  ardent 
souls,  as  in  a  burning  glass,  the  thought 
of  Deity  was  centred,  —  a  fire  that  con- 
sumed them,  a  shining  light  for  men. 
To  each  one  individually  came  the  call, 
the  message,  the  direct  revelation  from 
on  hig:h. 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.  43 

IIow  lovely  the  word  of  Jeremiah  : 
"  Then  said  I,  Ah !  Lord  God,  behold  I 
cannot  speak,  for  I  am  a  child.  But  the 
Lord  said  unto  me,  Say  not  I  am  a  child ; 
for  thou  shalt  go  to  all  that  I  shall  send 
thee,  and  whatsoever  I  command  thee 
thou  shalt  speak." 

And  again  the  vision  of  Isaiah  :  "  Woe 
is  me,  for  I  am  undone ;  because  I  am  a 
man  of  unclean  lips,  .  .  .  for  mine  eyes 
have  seen  the  King,  the  Lord  of  Hosts." 
Then  flew  the  seraph  with  the  live  coal 
from  off  the  altar  and  laid  it  upon  the 
prophet's  lips,  making  him  pure  to  speak. 
"Also  I  heard  the  voice  of  the  Lord, 
saying,  Whom  shall  I  send  and  who  will 
go  for  us?  Then  said  I,  Here  am  I, 
send  me." 

Li  the  Hebrew  writings  we  trace  not 
so  much  the  development  of  a  people 
as  of  an  idea,  that  constantly  grows  in 
strengtli  and  purity.     The  petty,  tribal 


44  THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

god,  cruel  and  partisan,  like  the  gods 
around  him.  becomes  the  universal  and 
eternal  God,  who  fills  all  time  and  space, 
all  heaven  and  earth,  and  beside  whom 
no  other  power  exists.  Throughout 
nature  His  will  is  law.  His  fiat  goes 
forth,  and  the  stars  obey  Him  in  their 
course,  the  wind  and  waves.  "  Fire  and 
hail,  snow  and  vapours,  stormy  wind  ful- 
filling His  word."  "  The  lightnings  do 
His  bidding  and  say  '  Here  we  are '  when 
He  commands  them." 

But  not  alone  in  the  physical  realm, 
still  more  is  He  the  moral  ruler  of  the 
universe;  and  here  we  come  upon  the 
core  of  the  Hebrew  conception,  its  true 
grandeur  and  originality,  upon  which 
the  whole  stress  was  laid,  —  namely,  that 
it  is  only  in  the  moral  sphere,  only  as  a 
moral  being,  that  man  can  enter  into 
relation  with  his  Maker  and  the  Maker 
of  the  universe,  and  come  to  any  under- 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  45 

standing  of  Him.  "  Canst  thou  by 
searcliino;  find  out  God  ?  Canst  thou 
find  out  the  Ahnighty  unto  perfection  ? 
It  is  as  high  as  heaven :  what  canst 
thou  do  ?  Deeper  than  hell :  what  canst 
thou  know  ?  " 

Not  through  the  finite,  limited  intel- 
lect, nor  any  outward  sense-perception, 
but  only  through  the  inner  moral  sense, 
do  these  earnest  teachers  bid  us  seek 
God,  who  reveals  Himself  in  the  law 
which  is  at  once  human  and  divine,  the 
voice  of  duty  and  of  conscience,  ani- 
mating the  soul  of  man.  Like  the  stars, 
he,  too,  can  obey  ;  and  then  his  righteous- 
ness will  shine  forth  as  the  noonday  sun, 
his  going  forth  will  be  like  the  dawn. 

It  is  this  breath  of  the  divine  that  vita- 
lises the  pages  of  the  Hebrew  prophets  and 
their  moral  precepts.  It  is  the  blending 
of  the  two  ideals,  the  complete  and  abso- 
lute identification  of  the  moral  and  relio;- 


46 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 


ious  life,  so  that  each  can  be  interpreted 
in  terms  of  the   other;    the  moral  life 
saturated  and  fed,  sustained  and   sanc- 
tified by  the   divine,   the    religious    life 
merely  a  divinely  ordained  morahty,  — 
this   it   is   that    constitutes    the   essence 
of  their  teachings,  the  unity  and  grand 
simplicity  of  their  ideal.     The  link  was 
never   broken   between    the  human  and 
divine,  between  conduct  and  its  motive, 
religion   and   morality,  nor  obscured  by 
any  cloudy  abstractions  of  theology  or 
metaphysics.      Their   God   was    a    God 
whom    the    people   could  understand,— 
no  mystic  figure  relegated  to  the  skies, 
but  a  very  present  power  working  uj^on 
earth  ;  a  personality  very  clear  and  dis- 
tinct, —  very  human,  one  might  almost 
say,    who    mingled    in    human    affairs, 
whose   word   was    swift    and    sure,    and 
whose   path   so   plain   to    follow  "that 
wayfaring  men,  though  fools,  should  not 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.  47 

err  therein."  What  He  required  was  no 
impossible  ideal^  but  simply  to  do  justice, 
to  love  mercy,  and  walk  humbly  before 
him.  What  He  promised  was  :  "  Seek 
ye  Me,  and  ye  shall  live." 

How  can  one  fail  to  be  impressed  by 
the  heroic  mould  of  these  austere,  impas- 
sioned souls,  and  by  the  richness  of  the 
soil  that  g;ave  them  birth  at  a  time  when 
spiritual  thought  had  scarcely  dawned 
upon  the  world  !  The  Prophets  were  tlie 
"  high  lights  "  of  Judaism  ;  but  the  light 
failed,  the  voices  ceased,  and  prophetism 
died  out.  Was  it  only  on  account  of  the 
people's  shortcomings,  or  was  there  not 
also  inherent  defect  in  itself  ?  In  spite 
of  its  broad  ethical  and  social  basis,  its 
seeming  universality,  it  never  became  the 
religion  of  the  masses,  because  in  reality 
it  is  the  religion  of  the  few,  the  elect 
and  chosen  of  God,  who  know  and  feel 
the  beauty  of  His  holiness.     It  did  not 


48  THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM, 

hold,  it  could  not  touch  the  wayward 
and  unrepentant ;  its  motive  and  appeal 
were  not  close,  not  searching  enough  to 
reach  the  unreached  depths,  the  inmost 
core  of  living,  and  set  free  hidden 
springs.  The  Prophets  were  always  de- 
nouncing, always  protesting  and  in- 
veighing against  wickedness.  Like  rifts 
in  the  storm-cloud  are  the  glimpses  of 
tenderness  and  compassion,  the  promises, 
the  vision  of  a  God  who  will  not  always 
chide,  whose  anger  will  not  last  forever. 
But  what  the  people  needed  was 
something  more  penetrating  and  per- 
suasive, or  else  something  more  con- 
genial to  their  actual  development  at 
the  time,  —  namely,  some  concrete  and 
sensuous  form  in  which  Deity  could  be 
brought  into  life.  Therefore  the  code 
was  devised,  or  rather  it  evolved  and 
grew  like  a  natural  growth  out  of  the 
conditions  and   constitution  of  Judaism. 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.         49 

The  Torah  was  literally  the  body  of  the 
Law,  in  which  the  spirit  was  encased  as 
in  a  mummy  shroud.  It  was  the  most 
subtle  and  elaborate  scheme,  the  most 
inQ:enious  mechanism  ever  contrived  to 
weave  together  the  human  and  divine 
into  a  method  and  polity  of  life  that 
should  be  wholly  sacramental,  and  so  pe- 
culiarly adapted  to  the  requirements  and 
circumstances  of  the  people  for  whom 
it  was  intended  that,  from  this  time 
forth,  it  made  their  destiny,  and  in  a 
singular  and  fateful  way  preserved  them, 
while  it  arrested  their  development. 

In  order  that  Israel  should  survive, 
should  continue  to  exist  at  all  in  the 
midst  of  the  ruins  that  were  falling 
around  it  and  the  darkness  upon  which 
it  was  entering,  it  was  necessary  that 
this  close,  internal  organisation,  this 
mesh  and  network  of  law  and  practice, 
of   regulated    usage  covering    the   most 

4 


50  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

insignificant  acts  of  life,  knitting  them 
together  as  with  nerve  and  sinew,  and 
invuhierable  to  any  catastrophe  from 
without,  should  take  the  place  of  all  ex- 
ternal prop  and  form  of  unity.  The 
whole  outer  framework  of  life  fell  awa}^ 
The  kingdom  perished,  the  temple  fell, 
the  people  scattered.  They  ceased  to 
be  a  nation,  they  ceased  to  be  a  church ; 
and  yet,  indissolubly  bound  by  these  in- 
visible chains,  as  fine  as  silk,  as  strong 
as  iron,  they  presented  an  impenetrable 
front  to  the  outside  world,  they  became 
more  intensely  national,  more  exclusive 
and  sectarian,  more  concentrated  in 
their  individuality  than  they  had  ever 
been  before.  The  Talmud  came  to  re- 
inforce the  Pentateuch,  and  rabbinism 
intensified  Judaism,  which  thereby  lost 
its  power  to  expand,  its  claim  to  be- 
come a  universal  religion,  and  remained 
the  prerogative  of  a  peculiar  people. 


THE  OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.         51 

With  fire  and  sword  the  Christian  era 
dawned  for  Israel.  Jerusalem  was  be- 
sieged, the  temple  fired,  the  holy  Mount 
in  flames,  and  a  million  people  perished, 
— a  fitting  prelude  to  the  long  tragedy 
that  has  not  ended  yet,  the  martyrdom 
of  eighteen  centuries :  death  in  every 
form,  by  flood,  by  fire,  and  with  every 
torture  that  could  be  conceived,  leaving 
a  track  of  blood  through  history ;  the 
crucified  of  the  nations  ;  strangers  and 
wanderers  in  every  age  and  every  land, 
calling  no  man  friend  and  no  spot  home ; 
withal,  the  ignominy  of  the  Ghetto,  a 
living  death.  Dark,  pitiable,  ignoble 
destiny  !  Magnificent,  heroic,  unconquer- 
able destiny,  luminous  with  self-sacrifice, 
unwritten  heroism,  devotion  to  an  ideal, 
a  cause  believed  in,  and  a  name  held 
sacred  !  But  destiny  still  unsolved,  mar- 
tyrdom not  yet  swallowed  up  in  victory. 

In    our    modern,    rushing    days    life 


52  THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

changes  with  such  swiftness  that  it  is 
difficult  even  to  follow  its  rapid  move- 
ment. During  the  last  hundred  years 
Judaism  has  undergone  more  modifica- 
tion than  during  the  previous  thousand 
years.  The  French  Revolution  sounded 
a  note  of  freedom  so  loud,  so  clamorous, 
that  it  pierced  the  Ghetto  walls  and 
found  its  way  to  the  imprisoned  souls. 
The  gates  were  thrown  open,  the  light 
streamed  in  from  outside,  and  the  Jew 
entered  the  modern  world.  As  if  by 
enchantment,  the  spell  which  had  bound 
him  hand  and  foot,  body  and  soul,  was 
broken,  and  his  mind  and  spirit,  re- 
leased from  thrall,  sprang  into  re-birth 
and  vigour.  Eager  for  life  in  every  form 
and  in  every  direction,  with  unused, 
pent-up  vitality,  he  pressed  to  the  front, 
and  crowded  the  avenues  where  life  was 
most  crowded,  thought  and  action. most 
stimulated.     And  in  order  to  this  move- 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.         53 

ment,  naturally  and  of  necessity,  he  be- 
gan to  disengage  himself  from  the  toils 
in  which  he  was  involved,  to  miwind 
himself,  so  to  speak,  from  fold  after 
fold  of  outworn  and  outlandish  custom 
and  usages  not  alone  irksome,  but  even 
intolerable,  and  incompatible  with  any 
but  an  immured  and  cloistered  life. 
Casting  off  the  outer  shell  or  skeleton, 
which,  like  the  bony  covering  of  the 
tortoise,  serves  as  armour  at  the  same 
time  that  it  impedes  all  movement  and 
progress  as  well  as  inner  growth,  Juda- 
ism thought  to  revert  to  its  original 
type,  —  the  pure  and  simple  monotheism 
of  the  early  days,  the  simple  creed  that 
right  is  might,  the  simple  law  of  justice 
among  men. 

Divested  of  its  spiritual  mechanism, 
absolutely  without  myth  or  dogma  of 
any  kind,  save  the  all-embracing  unity 
of  God,  taxing  so  little  the  credulity  of 


54  THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

men,  no  religion  seemed  so  fitted  to 
withstand  the  storm  and  stress  of  modern 
thought,  the  doubt  and  scepticism  of  a 
critical  and  scientific  age  that  has  played 
such  havoc  with  time-honoured  creeds. 
And  having  rid  himself,  as  he  proudly 
believed,  of  his  own  superstitions,  natu- 
rally the  Jew  had  no  inclination  to  adopt 
what  he  looked  upon  as  the  superstitions 
of  others.  He  was  still  as  much  as  ever 
the  Jew,  as  far  as  ever  removed  from  the 
Christian  standpoint  and  outlook,  the 
Christian  philosophy  and  solution  of  life. 
Broad  and  tolerant  as  either  side  might 
consider  itself,  there  was  a  fundamental 
disagreement  and  opposition,  almost  a 
different  make-up,  a  different  calibre  and 
attitude  of  soul,  fostered  by  centuries  of 
mutual  alienation  and  distrust.  To  be  a 
Jew  was  still  something  special,  something 
inherent,  that  did  not  depend  upon  any  ex- 
ternal conformity  or  non-conformity,  any 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.  55 

peculiar  mode  of  life.  The  tremendous 
background  of  the  past,  of  traditions  and 
associations  so  entirely  apart  from  those 
of  the  people  among  whom  they  dwelt, 
threw  them  into  strong  relief.  They 
were  a  marked  race  always,  upon  whom 
an  indelible  stamp  was  set ;  a  nation  that 
cohered  not  as  a  political  unit,  but  as  a 
single  family,  through  ties  the  most 
sacred,  the  most  vital  and  intimate,  of 
parent  to  child,  of  brother  and  sister, 
bound  still  more  closely  together  through 
a  common  fate  of  suffering.  And  yet 
they  were  everywhere  living  among 
Christians,  making  part  of  Christian 
communities,  and  mixing  freely  among 
them  for  all  the  business  of  life,  all 
material  and  temporal  ends. 

Thus  the  spiritual  and  secular  life, 
which  had  been  absolutely  one  with  the 
Jew,  grew  apart  in  his  own  sphere,  as 
well  as  in  his  intercourse  with  the  Chris- 


66  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

tians ;  the  divorce  was  complete  between 
religion  and  the  daily  life.  In  his  in- 
most consciousness,  deep  down  below 
the  surface,  he  might  be  still  a  Jew,  but 
for  the  rest  he  would  be  a  Gentile.  The 
Gentile  world  allured  him,  and  the  false 
gods  whom  the  nations  around  him 
worshipped,  —  success,  power,  the  pride 
of  life  and  of  the  intellect.  He  threw 
himself  full  tilt  into  the  arena  where  the 
clash  was  loudest,  the  press  thickest,  the 
struggle  keenest  to  compete  and  out- 
strip one  another,  which  we  moderns 
call  life.  All  his  faculties  were  sharpened 
to  it,  and  in  his  eagerness  he  forgot  his 
proper  birthright.  He  drifted  away 
from  his  spiritual  bearings,  and  lost  sight 
of  spiritual  horizons.  He,  the  man  of 
the  past,  became  essentially  the  man  of 
to-day,  with  interest  centred  on  the 
present,  the  actual;  with  intellect  set 
free  to  grapple  with  the  problems  of  the 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.         57 

hour,  and  solve  them  by  its  own  unaided 
light.  Liberal,  progressive,  humanita- 
rian he  might  become,  but  always  along 
human  lines  ;  the  link  was  gone  with 
any  larger,  more  satisfying,  and  compre- 
hensive life.  Religion  had  detached  itself 
from  life,  not  only  in  its  trivial  every-day 
concerns,  but  in  its  highest  aims  and 
aspirations.  The  something  that  the 
Hebrew  prophets  had,  that  made  their 
moral  teaching  vital  and  luminous,  was 
lacking,  —  the  larger  vision  reaching  out 
to  the  unseen,  the  abiding  sense  of  an 
eternal  will  and  purpose  underlying  hu- 
man transient  schemes,  an  eternal  pres- 
ence, transfusing  all  of  life  as  with  a 
hidden  flame,  so  that  love  of  country, 
love  of  right,  love  of  man,  were  not  alone 
human  things,  but  also  divine,  because 
they  were  embraced  and  focussed  in  a 
single  living  unity,  that  was  the  love  of 
God.      How    different     now    the    cold, 


58  THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

abstract^  and  passive  unity,  the  only 
article  of  their  faith  now  left  to  them, 
that  had  no  hold  whatever,  no  touch 
with  life  at  any  point,  no  kindling 
power  ! 

In  what  of  positive  and  vital  did  their 
Judaism  consist  ?  Were  they  not  rather 
Jews  by  negation,  by  opposition,  non- 
Christians,  first  and  foremost  ?  And 
here  was  just  the  handle,  just  the  griev- 
ance, for  their  enemies  to  seize  upon. 
Every  charge  would  fit.  Behold  the 
Jew !  Behold  one  not  ourselves,  who 
would  be  one  of  us  !  Our  masters,  even, 
who  would  wrest  our  prizes  from  us, 
whose  keen  wits  and  clever  fingers  have 
somehow  touched  the  inner  springs  that 
rule  our  world  to-day  and  set  its  wheels 
in  motion  !  Every  cry  could  shape  itself 
against  them,  every  class  could  take  alarm, 
and  every  prejudice  go  loose.  And  hence 
the     Proteus     form     of     anti-Semitism. 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.         59 

Wherever  the  social  conditions  are  most 
unstable,  tlie  equilibriuni  most  threatened 
and  easily  disturbed,  in  barbarous  Russia, 
liberal  France,  and  philosophic  Germany, 
the  problem  is  most  acute ;  but  there  is 
no  country  now,  civilised  or  uncivilised, 
where  some  echo  of  it  has  not  reached ; 
even  in  our  own  free-breathing  America, 
some  wave  has  come  to  die  upon  our 
shores. 

And  in  view  of  such  a  situation,  with 
such  contingencies  within  us  and  with- 
out, how  are  we  equipped,  how  are  we 
prepared  as  Jews,  to  meet  it  and  be  true 
to  our  highest,  largest  destiny?  What 
answer  have  we  for  ourselves  and  for 
the  world  in  this,  the  trial  hour  of  our 
faith,  the  crucial  test  of  Judaism? 

Each  one  of  us  must  look  into  our  own 
hearts  and  see  what  Judaism  stands  for 
in  that  inner  shrine  ;  what  it  holds  that 
satisfies  our  deepest  need,  consoles  and 


60         THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM. 

fortifies  us,  compensates  for  every  sacri- 
fice, every  liumiliation  we  may  be  called 
upon  to  endure,  so  that  we  can  count  it 
a  glory,  not  a  shame,  to  suffer.  Will 
national  or  personal  loyalty  suffice  for 
this  when  our  personality  is  not  touched, 
our  nationality  is  merged  ?  Will  pride  of 
family  or  race  take  away  the  sting,  the 
stigma  ?  Lo,  we  have  turned  the  shield, 
and  persecution  becomes  our  opportunity. 
''  Those  that  were  in  darkness,  upon 
them  the  light  hath  shined." 

What  is  the  meaning  of  this  exodus 
from  Russia,  from  Poland,  these  long, 
black  lines  like  funeral  lines,  crossing  the 
frontiers  or  crushed  within  the  pale,  these 
"  despised  and  rejected  of  men,"  emerg- 
ing from  their  Ghettos,  scarcely  able  to 
bear  the  light  of  day?  Many  of  them 
will  never  see  the  Promised  Land  ;  and  for 
those  who  do,  cruel  will  be  the  suffering 
before  they  enter,  long  and  difficult  will 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  61 

be  the  task  and  process  of  assimilation 
and  regeneration.  But  for  us,  who  stand 
upon  the  shore,  in  the  full  blessed  light  of 
freedom,  and  watch  at  last  the  ending 
of  that  weary  pilgrimage  through  the 
centuries,  how  great  the  responsibility, 
how  great  the  occasion,  if  only  we  can 
rise  to  it !  Let  us  not  think  our  duty 
ended  when  we  have  taken  in  the  wan- 
derers, given  them  food  and  shelter,  and 
initiated  them  into  the  sharp  daily 
struggle  to  exist,  upon  which  we  are  all 
embarked ;  nor  yet  guarding  their  ex- 
clusiveness,  when  we  leave  them  to  their 
narrow  rites  and  limiting  observance, 
until,  breaking  free  from  these,  they  find 
themselves,  like  their  emancipated  breth- 
ren elsewhere,  adrift  on  a  blank  sea  of 
indifference  and  materialism. 

If  Judaism  would  be  anything  in  the 
world  to-day,  it  must  be  a  spiritual  force. 
Only  then  can  it  be   true  to  its  special 


62         THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

mission,  the  spirit,  not  the  letter  of  its 
truth.  And  as  we  have  seen,  it  does  not 
remain  a  spiritual  force,  when,  holding 
itself  aloof,  it  only  shares  the  worldly  life 
of  those  around  it,  and  is  brought  only 
in  contact  with  worldly  influences. 

Away,  then,  with  all  the  Ghettos  !  and 
with  spiritual  isolation  in  every  form, 
and  let  the  "  spirit  blow  where  it  listeth." 
The  Jew  must  chans-e  his  attitude  before 
the  world,  and  come  into  spiritual  fellow- 
ship with  those  around  him.  We  must 
cross  the  Rubicon,  the  blank  page  that 
separates  tlie  Old  Testament  from  the 
New,  and  read  with  fresh  eyes,  fresh 
hearts,  the  life  and  teachings  of  tlie  one 
whom  the  world  calls  Master.  We  shall 
not  thereby  leave  our  own  soil.  John, 
Paul,  Jesus  himself,  —  we  can  claim  them 
all  for  our  own.  We  do  not  want 
'^  missions "  to  convert  us  ;  we  cannot 
become      Presbyterians,      Episcopalians, 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.         63 

members  of  any  dividing  sect  "  teaching 
for  doctrines  the  opinions  of  men." 
Christians  as  well  as  Jews  need  the 
larger  imity  that  shall  embrace  them 
all,  the  unity  of  spirit,  not  of  doctrine. 
Mankind  at  large  may  not  be  ready  for 
a  universal  religion;  but  let  the  Jews,  with 
their  prophetic  instinct,  their  deep,  spirit- 
ual insight,  set  the  example  and  give  the 
ideal.  The  Jewish  idea,  broaden  it  as  we 
may,  straiten  it  as  we  may,  does  not 
contain  all  the  truth.  Neither  the  Law 
nor  the  Prophets,  the  ceremonial  nor  the 
moral  code,  covers  the  whole  of  that 
mysterious  experience  we  call  life,  and 
that  still  greater  mystery  that  in  our 
ignorance  we  call  death.  But  the  Law 
fulfilled,  which  is  Love,  as  '-  Christ 
the  Jew"  taught  and  lived  it,  —  love 
as  the  very  essence  of  all  life,  human 
as  well  as  divine,  —  brings  a  radiant 
presence  that  transfigures  life  and  death, 


64         THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

a  new  conception  and  explanation  of  our 
destiny. 

But  the  world  has  not  yet  fathomed 
the  secret  of  its  redemption,  and  ^^  salva- 
tion may  yet  again  be  of  the  Jews."  Once 
again,  by  a  supreme  act  of  self-sacrifice,  by 
voluntarily  laying  down  that  which  they 
held  to  be  their  life,  and  which  through 
all  these  darkened  years  they  had  guarded 
as  their  most  sacred  trust  and  treasure, 
can  the  Jews  become  the  Messiah  of  the 
nations,  lighting  the  fires  that  have  been 
allowed  to  go  out,  and  holding  up  the 
torch  for  all  mankind.  But  this  can  only 
be  by  absorption  and  assimilation  of  the 
spiritual  wealth  of  the  world,  not  by 
denial  and  exclusion. 

I  should  like  to  quote  in  this  connection 
a  few  passages  from  the  Hibbert  Lectures 
of  Claude  Montefiore,  a  masterly  exposi- 
tion of  Judaism.     He  says  :  — 

"It   is    only  now  that    this    amazing 


THE   OUTLOOK  OF  JUDAISM.  Q^ 

idealisation  of  the  law  is  slowly  break- 
ing down,  when  the  Pentateuch  is  being 
estimated  at  its  actual  historic  worth, 
and  subjected  to  the  scalpel  of  a  criticism 
which  disintegrates  its  unity  and  be- 
reaves it  of  its  supernatural  glamour, 
that  Judaism  will,  I  think,  gradually 
begin  to  feel  the  want  of  a  dominant 
and  consistent  doctrine,  adequate  and 
comprehensive,  soul-satisfying  and  ra- 
tional, which  can  set  forth  and  illumi- 
nate in  its  entire  compass  the  relation 
of  the  individual  to  society  and  to  God. 
I  am  myself  inclined  to  believe  that, 
from  the  words  attributed  in  the  Gospels 
to  Jesus,  important  elements  toward  the 
formation  of  such  a  congruous  body  of 
doctrine  could  well  be  chosen  out,  — 
elements  which  would  harmonise,  de- 
velop, and  bring  together  the  highest 
religious  teaching  in  the  Old  Testament 
and  the  early  rabbinical  literature,  and 

5 


66         THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

which  a  prophetic  though  not  a  legal 
Judaism,  with  full  consistency  and  much 
advantage^  might  adopt  and  cherish  as 
its  own.  .  .  .  Some  of  the  sayings  as- 
cribed to  Jesus  have  sunk  too  deep  into 
the  human  heart  —  or  shall  I  say  into 
the  spiritual  consciousness  of  civilised 
mankind  ?  —  to  make  it  probable  that 
any  religion  which  ignores  or  omits 
them  will  exercise  a  considerable  influ- 
ence outside  its  own  borders." 

The  times  are  full  of  signs.  On  every 
side  there  is  a  call,  a  challenge,  a.nd  awa- 
kening. Out  of  the  heart  of  our  materi- 
alistic civilisation  has  come  the  cry  of  the 
spirit  hungering  for  its  food,  "  the  bread 
without  money  and  without  price,"  the 
bread  which  money  cannot  buy,  and 
"  thirsting  for  the  living  waters,  which  if 
a  man  drink  he  shall  not  thirst  again." 
What  the  world  needs  to-day,  —  not  alone 
the  Jews,  who  have  borne  the  yoke,  but 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  67 

the  Christians,  who  bear  Christ's  name 
and  persecute,  and  who  have  built  up  a 
civilisation  so  entirely  at  variance  with 
the  principles  he  taught, — what  we  all 
need,  Gentiles  and  Jews  alike,  is  not  so 
much  "2i  new  body  of  doctrine,"  which 
Mr.  Montefiore  suggests,  but  a  new  spirit 
put  into  life,  which  will  re-fashion  it  upon 
a  nobler  plan  and  consecrate  it  anew  to 
higher  purpose  and  ideals.  Science  has 
done  its  work,  clearing  away  the  dead 
wood  of  ignorance  and  superstition,  en- 
larging the  vision  and  opening  out  the 
path.  It  is  for  religion  now  to  fill  with 
spirit  and  with  life  the  facts  that  know- 
ledge gives  us,  to  breathe  a  living  soul 
into  the  universe. 

"Eeturn  unto  me,  and  I  will  return 
unto  you,  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts."  ^^  All 
we,  like  sheep,  have  gone  astray."  Chris- 
tians and  Jews  alike  have  turned  from 
the  true  path,  worshipping  upon  the  high 


68  THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM. 

places  and  under  every  green  tree,  falling 
down  before  idols  of  gold  and  silver,  and 
making  graven  images  of  every  earthly 
and  every  heavenly  thing. 

Thus  have  we  builded  a  kingdom 
wholly  of  the  earth,  solid  and  stately  to 
the  eye  of  sense,  but  hollow  and  honey- 
combed with  falsehood,  and  whose  foun- 
dations are  so  insecure  that  they  tremble 
at  every  earthly  shock,  every  attempt  at 
readjustment ;  and  we  half  expect  to  see 
the  brilliant  pageant  crumble  before  our 
sight,  and  disappear  like  the  unsubstan- 
tial fabric  of  a  dream. 

Christians  and  Jews  alike,  "  Have  we 
not  all  one  Father;  hath  not  one  God 
created  us?"  Remember  to  what  you 
are  called,  you  who  claim  belief  in  a  liv- 
ing God  who  is  a  Spirit,  and  who  therefore 
must  be  "worshipped  in  spirit  and  in 
truth,"  —  not  with  vain  forms  and  mean- 
ingless service,  nor  yet  in  the  world's  glit- 


THE   OUTLOOK   OF  JUDAISM.  69 

tering  shapes,  the  work  of  men's  hands  or 
brains ;  but  in  the  ever-growing,  ever- 
deepening  love  and  knowledge  of  His 
truth,  and  its  showing  forth  to  men. 

Once  more  let  the  Holy  Spirit  descend 
and  dwell  among  you  in  your  life  to-day, 
as  it  did  upon  your  holy  men,  your 
prophets  of  the  olden  times,  lighting  the 
world,  as  it  did  for  them,  with  that  radi- 
ance of  the  skies.  And  so  make  known 
the  faith  that  is  in  you;  "for  by  their 
fruits  ye  shall  know  them." 

September,  1893. 


JUDAISM,   OLD  AND   NEW. 


^ 


"  117  PUK  si  muove."  The  world  moves, 
^-^  and  there  is  ever  a  new  dawn 
breaking  for  those  whose  eyes  are  turned 
toward  the  light.  A  few  years  ago 
the  life  of  the  Jew  was  a  sealed  book 
to  most  of  his  contemporaries.  Here 
and  there  a  solitary  figure,  an  excep- 
tional character  in  real  life  or  in  fiction, 
stood  out  in  bold  and  exaggerated  relief, 
generally  unrelated  or  falsely  related  to 
its  surroundings,  and  therefore  convey- 
ing but  little  idea  of  the  truth. 

To-day  we  have  almost  a  new  Jewish 
literature  of  our  own,  springing  up  in 
our  midst,  dealing  not  with  foreign  con- 
ditions and  circumstance,  but  with  the 


JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW.  71 


facts  as  they  are  here  and  now  among 
us ;  depicting  not  the  historic  Jew  of  the 
past,  the  ideal  and  impossible  Jew  of  the 
imagination,  but  the  real  and  actual  Jew 
of  the  present,  the  modern  Jew  whose 
name  is  Legion  —  no  less  than  ever,  per- 
haps, an  enigmatic  figure,  as  he  moves 
everywhere  among  his  fellow-men,  in  the 
crowd  and  yet  not  quite  of  it ;  or  as  he 
stands  apart,  wrapped  in  strange  guise 
and  custom,  and  speaking  a  language 
which  the  world  of  to-day  does  not  un- 
derstand. He  who  runs  may  read,  and, 
indeed,  there  is  no  excuse,  no  escape  for 
the  modern  Jew  of  even  the  most  ordi- 
nary stamp  and  culture.  He  must  know 
the  status  of  his  people,  the  problems 
that  beset  them ;  and  if  he  does,  he  can- 
not fail  to  bring  whatever  heart  or  brain 
he  has  to  try  to  understand  and  solve 
them. 

For  surely  no   people  are  confronted 


72  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW. 

by  SO  singular  a  destiny,  past,  present, 
and  to  come.  Never  was  there  a  situa- 
tion so  complicated,  with  elements  so 
diverse  and  contradictory,  to  be  fused, 
reconciled,  and  assimilated :  not  one 
nation,  but  every  nation,  and  generally 
the  outcast  and  rejected  of  that  nation ; 
aliens  wherever  they  tread,  wherever 
they  seek  to  find  a  home,  even  among 
their  own  race,  since  there  is  no  strong 
hand  to  guide  and  gather  them  in,  no 
true  leadership,  no  adequate  idea  to  rally 
round,  no  single  goal  or  purpose  to  bind 
and  knit  together. 

In  "  The  Children  of  the  Ghetto,  The 
Grandchildren  of  the  Ghetto,"  Mr.  Zang- 
will  tells  the  story  for  us  with  dramatic 
force  and  realism.  Sweeping,  as  he 
does,  the  whole  field  of  vision,  the  social 
scale  from  bottom  upward,  he  gives,  as 
it  were,  an  epitome  of  Jewish  life  and 
history ;  so  that  it  is  to  his  vivid  pages, 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  73 

almost  rather  than  to  life  itself,  that  we 
would  turn  for  the  bird's-eye  view  in 
which  no  detail  is  lost,  the  broad  sur- 
vey of  his  subject,  the  bold,  free  hand- 
ling, and  yet  the  human  sympathy  and 
insight.  With  master  hand  he  throws 
the  flash-lisrht  and  illuminates  the  canvas 
for  us,  —  a  great  tableau  vivant,  a  moving 
panorama,  crowded  with  figures  of  every 
age  and  clime,  and  touched  with  every 
shade  of  colour,  light  and  darkness.  The 
patriarch  of  hoary,  long-forgotten  days, 
the  mediaeval  shapes,  still  muffled  and 
draped  with  the  past,  are  there ;  the 
bourgeois  and  the  Philistine  of  to-day, 
the  idealist,  the  sad-eyed,  and  the  hope- 
ful dreamer,  the  visionary  whose  ardent 
gaze  is  fastened  on  a  vision  among  the 
clouds,  or  wanders  and  is  lost  in  far-away 
horizons  that  escape  and  elude  him. 

It  is  the  whole  drama  of  Israel  that  is 
always  repeating  itself,  for   the   reason 


74  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW. 

that  the  past  as  well  as  the  present  is 
an  actuality;  the  old  types  survive  and 
are  reproduced,  while  new  ones  are  being 
born.  Thus  the  strange  contrasts  and 
juxtapositions,  the  anomalies,  we  might 
almost  say,  the  fatality  of  Judaism.  For 
the  outer  life  is  but  the  reflection  of  the 
inner ;  here  also  tlie  same  chaos  reigns, 
the  same  lack  of  unity  and  coherence, 
the  perpetual  clash  and  conflict  always 
to  be  renewed,  until,  if  ever,  we  reach 
an  idea  large  enough  to  reconcile  the  old 
and  new,  the  present  with  the  past.  - 

As  Mr.  Zangwill  paints  it  (and  he 
paints  it  truly),  Judaism  seems  but  a 
tragic  masquerade,  a  kaleidoscope  of  shift- 
ing, many-coloured  views.  His  characters 
are  swayed  back  and  forth :  now  carried 
forward  by  a  wave  of  aspiration  and 
progress,  and  again  swept  backward  by 
a  still  stronger  tide  that  they  cannot 
resist.     We  are  wanderino:  in  the  wilder- 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  75 

ness  again ;  here  and  there  a  mirage,  a 
dream  of  the  past,  a  dream  of  the  future, 
as  of  light  breaking  through  the  clouds, 
but  the  darkness  gathers  and  settles 
again.  We  close  the  book  with  a  deep 
sense  of  tragedy  and  unrest,  of  lives 
blighted  and  bewildered,  tossed  upon  a 
sea  of  doubts  and  perplexities,  of  un- 
solved destiny  ;  and  we  ask  ourselves :  Is 
this,  then,  the  last  word  of  our  Judaism  ? 
Is  it  a  failure,  a  mistake,  a  '^  misfortune," 
as  Heine  puts  it;  "a  forlorn  hope,  an 
impossibility,"  as  Mr.  Zangwill's  heroine, 
Esther  Ansell,  mournfully  concludes  ?  — 
and  she  knew  whereof  she  spoke.  Must 
it  hang  henceforth  on  two  horns  of  a 
dilemma,  unable  to  save,  unable  to  lose 
itself ;  or  else,  moving  in  a  circle,  must 
it  endlessly  revolve  upon  itself  ? 

But  before  even  attempting  to  give 
an  answer  to  these  questions,  let  us 
glance  at  some  other   books  before  us. 


76  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW. 

In  "  Joseph  Zalmonah,"  Edward  King 
deals  with  the  social  and  economic  prob- 
lem, the  horrors  of  the  sweating  system, 
the  overstocked  labour  market,  and  the 
special  phases  connected  with  the  influx 
of  Russian  and  Polish  immigration,  —  in 
a  word,  the  "  bondage  "  of  the  wretched 
exiles  in  the  land  of  promise,  which  they 
find  to  their  cost  "  is  not  a  land  of  per- 
formance." Step  by  step  he  traces  the 
course  of  the  hapless  refugee  back  to 
Russia,  escaping  from  the  Pale,  and  flee- 
ing in  the  dark  winter  night  across  the 
bridge  into  Germany ;  the  emigrant  ship 
arriving  in  New  York  ;  the  little  crowd  of 
exiles  on  the  lower  deck,  standing  with 
uncovered  head,  outstretched  arms,  and 
glistening  eyes  to  greet  the  Statue  of 
Liberty,  "  the  mighty  symbol  of  freedom 
and  refuge  from  tyranny  ;  "  the  dreams, 
the  hopes,  and  tlien,  alas !  the  cruel 
deceptions,  the  bitter  reality,  ''  the  sick- 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  77 

ening  search  for  work,  the  wretched  lodg- 
ings, the  repulsive  food,  the  failure  to 
find  anything  to  do  ;  "  "  Misery  Market," 
where  the  last  treasure  disappears, —  the 
gold  watch,  the  fur  coat  and  cap,  —  and, 
finally,  the  sweaters'  hell,  where  the 
grinding  wheel  of  Sisyphus  eternally  re- 
volves, and  the  wretched  toiler  faints  and 
drops  by  the  way. 

I  would  not  here  rehearse  the  ghastly 
scenes,  the  pitiful  details,  but  refer  the 
reader  to  Mr.  King's  graphic  pages  if  he 
would  study  this  woful  aspect  of  our 
modern  civilisation.  Throughout  the 
book  the  author  has  skilfully  contrived 
to  keep  the  local  colour  and  traits,  the 
peculiar  stamp  of  Orientalism ;  and  he 
opens  for  us  so  curious  a  bit  of  New 
York  life,  something  so  altogether  unique 
and  unexpected,  that  it  is  difficult  for  us 
to  realise  unless  we  have  alread}^  made 
ourselves  familiar  with  it.     His  descrip- 


78  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW, 

tions  are  drawn  from  the  life,  within  a 
stone's  throw  of  our  own  homes,  in  the 
heart  of  our  own  city ;  and  yet  they  seem 
as  far  removed  as  the  East  is  from  the 
^Yest,  as  foreign  and  absolutely  un-Ameri- 
can as  anything  that  could  be  met  with, 
the  world  over.  It  is  all  a  sort  of  '^  jar- 
gon "  of  sights  and  sounds  and  colours, 
—  the  Hebrew  signs  and  letters  on  the 
houses,  the  motley  crowd,  the  motley 
wares  spread  everywhere  upon  the  side- 
walk, the  market,  the  theatre,  —  all 
making  a  nondescript  medley  and  conglo- 
merate, as  though  an  unknown  stratum 
of  the  earth  had  come  to  obtrude  and 
superimpose  itself  upon  the  surface. 

Again  we  feel  like  crying  out :  "  How 
long,  0  Lord,  how  long  ?  "  But  we  know 
that  in  a  twinkling,  before  a  generation 
shall  have  passed  away,  in  less  than  a 
twelvemonth  indeed,  the  children  of 
these  outcasts  have  been  taught  to  speak 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  79 

English  and  prepared  for  the  public 
schools.  The  American  flag  has  been 
explained  to  them,  and,  like  a  prayer, 
each  morning  they  have  offered  their 
allegiance.  And  we  realise  that  for 
some  of  these  at  least  new  ideas  are 
being  born,  new  conditions  are  being 
created,  that  will  sweep  away  the  old 
landmarks  more  effectually  than  flood 
or  fire,  or  time  or  space. 

Quite  a  different  note,  and  yet  no  less 
deep  and  true  a  one,  is  struck  in  the 
modest,  unpretending  little  volume,  al- 
most child-like  in  its  simplicity,  "Other 
Things  Being  Equal,"  by  Emma  Wolf. 
We  have  here  the  problem  that  is  left 
when  all  other  problems  are  solved,  all 
other  differences  and  obstacles  have  been 
set  aside.  It  is  the  final,  ultimate  step  — 
shall  we  say  the  solution?  The  Jew 
and  the  Christian  meet  on  absolutely 
equal  terms.     On  neither  side  is  any  dis- 


80  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW. 

parity  recognised.  Mentally,  morally, 
socially,  the  man  and  the  woman  are 
equally  matched.  ^'Religiously  they 
hold  the  same  broad  love  for  God  and 
man."  Shall  they  intermarry?  And 
now,  out  of  its  last  stronghold,  arises 
the  ghost  of  the  past,  —  not  a  stern,  piti- 
less, and  forbidding  figure,  but  a  gentle, 
dear,  and  good  old  man,  a  most  loving 
and  beloved  father,  who,  with  broken 
heart  and  broken  voice,  tells  his  daughter : 
"  No,  my  child,  I  cannot  consent,  and  yet 
I  shall  not  withhold.  I  do  most  solemnly 
and  seriously  object,  .  .  .  but  trust  me, 
dear,  it  is  through  no  lack  of  love  for 
you.  Do  not  consider  me ;  forget,  if 
you  will,  all  I  have  said.  .  .  .  The  door 
is  open ;  you  can  pass  through  without 
my  hand." 

The  charm  and  pathos  of  the  book,  as 
well  as  its  originality,  consist  in  the  fact 
that  it  is  love,  and  always  love,  that  con- 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  81 

quers  every  time.  The  author  has  taken 
for  her  motto  :  ''  And  now  abideth  faith, 
hope,  and  love,  these  three :  but  the  great- 
est of  these  is  love."  Ruth  Levice  gives 
up  her  lover,  not  from  a  sense  of  duty, 
but  because  she  loves  her  father  better 
than  herself,  or  than  her  lover,  who  had 
become  part  of  herself.  She  writes  to 
Dr.  Kemp :  — 

''  Only  /  am  causing  this  separation  ; 
no  one  else  could  or  would.  Do  not 
blame  my  father ;  if  he  were  to  see  me 
writing  thus  he  would  beg  me  to  desist ; 
he  would  think  I  am  sacrificing  my  hap- 
piness for  him.  ...  I  am  no  Jephthah's 
daughter;  he  wants  no  sacrifice,  and  I 
make  none.  Duty,  the  hardest  word  to 
learn,  is  not  leading  me.  .  .  .  Let  me  say 
it  now  —  I  could  never  be  happy  with 

you." 

Her  father's  arguments  have  not  con- 
vinced her.     She  stands  just  where  she 

6 


82  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW, 

stood  before,  high  above  all  prejudice  and 
narrowness  of  view ;  but  no  convictions 
of  her  own,  no  dream  of  happiness,  can 
outweigh  the  knowledge  of  her  father's 
broken  life,  the  picture  of  his  stooping 
form  as  he  turns  from  her,  bent  as  beneath 
the  burden  of  the  past.  Bravely  and 
resolutely  she  takes  up  her  life,  doing 
nothing  by  halves,  determined  at  any 
cost  to  make  her  father  happy.  But 
the  struggle  tells,  and  the  eyes  of  love 
cannot  be  deceived.  Her  father  realises 
the  sacrifice  that  has  been  made  and  the 
motive  for  it,  all  the  love  and  anguish 
of  the  struggle  ;  and  with  the  knowledge 
comes  a  higher  vision,  a  deeper  and  larger 
perception  than  he  had  had  before.  He, 
too,  rises  out  of  self,  out  of  views  that 
were  personal  and  perhaps  peculiar,  and 
trusts  the  larger  love  that  now  is  guiding 
him.  He  acknowledges  his  mistake.  He 
says  :  — 


JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW.  83 

"  I  stood  convicted.  I  was  in  the  posi- 
tion of  a  blind  fool  who,  with  a  beautiful 
picture  before  him,  fastens  his  critical, 
condemning  gaze  upon  a  rusting  nail  in 
the  wall  behind,  a  nail  even  now  loosened, 
and  which  in  another  generation  will  be 
displaced." 

As  the  blue  sky  arches  over  all  alike, 
he  argues,  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor, 
great  and  small,  so  does  the  all-encom- 
passing love  of  God  —  the  same  God 
—  hold  all  of  us  alike,  Jew  and  Chris- 
tian, believer  and  unbeliever.  Differences 
of  belief,  like  all  other  differences,  are 
human,  not  divine  —  matters  of  human 
opinion.  In  God's  sight,  God's  love,  all 
are  one,  all  are  His  children,  and  there- 
fore brothers.  What  are  we,  who  in  our 
erring  human  judgment  should  try  to  put 
asunder  those  whom  God  hath  truly 
joined  together  in  soul  and  spirit,  so  that 
no  human  circumstance  or  difference  has 


84  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW. 

power  to  part  them  ?  And  with  this  con- 
viction, Mr.  Levice  gives  his  daughter  to 
the  man  she  loves. 

It  is  impossible  in  a  brief  review  to 
give  an  idea  of  the  rare  tenderness  and 
pathos  with  which  the  subject  is  treated, 
even  in  its  minor  details  and  characters. 
There  is  a  hint,  a  touch  of  something  so 
unusual  in  the  book  that  we  are  tempted 
to  exclaim  :  "  Ah,  yes,  but  it  is  not  true 
to  life ! ''  And  neither  is  it ;  but  that  is 
because  life,  as  we  most  of  us  live  it,  is 
not  true  to  itself,  its  best  self,  its  highest 
possibilities  and  ideals,  the  faith,  the 
hope,  the  love  that  we  were  meant  to 
live  by. 

And  it  is  just  here  that  the  little  vol- 
ume gives  the  keynote  of  what  one  would 
like  to  say.  After  all,  what  is  the  vital 
question  to-day,  as  it  has  always  been, 
through  all  time  and  all  vicissitudes,  with 
which  we  Jews  have  to  deal  ?     Is  it  not 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  85 

now  as  it  has  ever  been,  —  how  to  keep 
the  Faith?  Throughout  the  centuries, 
what  endless  martyrdom,  what  countless 
sacrifices  for  this  !  And  now  that  the 
martyrdom,  has  ceased,  that  the  clouds 
seem  to  lift,  and  we  advance  from  slavery 
into  freedom,  from  darkness  into  light, 
the  question,  so  far  from  growing  clearer, 
becomes  an  increasingly  difficult  one. 

We  stand  upon  the  threshold  of  we 
know  not  what,  —  unable  to  go  backward, 
not  daring  to  go  forward.  The  future 
beckons  us  on  with  promise  of  wider, 
freer  life,  unchecked  growth  and  scope, 
broad,  unhampered  human  and  spiritual 
fellowship.  The  past  holds  us  with  invin- 
cible weight.  "  Deny  me,  and  you  deny 
yourself,"  it  says;  "your  very  life,  all 
that  makes  you  what  you  are."  The 
blood  of  martyrs  seems  to  cry  to  us : 
"  Would  you  be  faithless,  then,  to  us, 
and  have  we  died  in  vain  ?  " 


SQ  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW. 

And  whence  come  these  questionings, 
this  doubt  and  division  of  soul  ?  Surely 
from  lack  of  faith  and  vision,  rather  than 
from  true  loyalty  and  conviction.  Not  in 
vain  will  be  that  martyrdom  when  it  has 
taught  us  to  be  faithful  as  those  martyrs 
were,  and  when  we  have,  as  they  had,  a 
faith  of  our  own  to  be  true  to  ;  when  we 
are  ready  to  trust  and  follow  it  wherever  it 
may  lead,  to  deny  self  and  offer  up  life 
for  its  sake.  But  we  have  lost  the 
faith,  not  merely  in  the  narrow,  liis- 
toric  sense,  not  alone  in  allegiance  to 
the  past,  in  outward  conformity  to  ex- 
ternal rites  and  inherited  usage,  but  as 
an  inward,  quickening  power,  a  source 
of  our  spiritual  life  and  action,  a  vision 
of  something  that  makes  life  holy,  beau- 
tiful, and  blessed,  whatever  martyrdom 
we  may  be  called  upon  to  endure,  what- 
ever sacrifice  we  may  be  called  upon  to 
make. 


JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW.  87 

And  when  we  read  it  aright,  the  story 
of  our  people  means,  above  all  else,  this 
faith,  a  perfect  trust  and  confidence  in  the 
leading  and  purpose  of  the  Most  High, 
whatever  that  leading  and  purpose  may 
be,  and  whether  or  not  we  understand  it. 
"  Though  He  slay  me,  yet  will  I  trust  in 
Him."  Did  Abraham  hesitate  when  God 
bade  him  leave  his  Mesopotamian  home 
and  go,  ^^he  knew  not  whither,"  to 
found  a  new  home,  a  new  nation  ?  Did 
Moses  heed  the  murmurs  and  discontent 
of  those  who  would  have  returned  to 
bondage  in  Egypt  rather  than  be  led 
through  the  wilderness  ? 

Whether  or  not  we  have  the  prophetic 
vision,  whether  or  not  we  see  and  under- 
stand the  promise  beyond,  we  can  be 
faithful  still,  now  that  we  find  ourselves 
on  the  verge  of  a  larger  deliverance  than 
ever  before.  They  are  the  faithless  who 
would  lag  behind. 


88  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW, 

"  New  occasions  teach  new  duties  ; 

Time  makes  ancient  good  uncouth. 
They  must  upward  still  and  onward 

Who  would  keep  abreast  of  truth. 
Lo !  before  us  gleam  the  camp  fires  I 

We,  ourselves,  must  pilgrims  be, 

Nor  attempt  the  Future's  portal. 
With  the  Past's  blood-rusted  key.'* 

It  is  the  task  of  Judaism  to  be  up  and 
doing,  alert  and  ready  to  receive,  not  pas- 
sively accepting  what  has  been  handed 
down,  nor  yet  watching  the  smoulder- 
ing fires  of  a  lingering  sacrifice.  Let  us 
take  our  Judaism  fearlessly  out  into  the 
world,  to  be  put  to  any  test,  but,  above 
all,  freely  to  be  used,  not  in  its  own  ser- 
vice, but  in  the  service  of  the  God  in 
whom  it  believes,  the  universal  Father  of 
all,  and,  therefore,  in  the  world's  highest 
service.  And  in  order  to  do  this,  first 
and  foremost  we  must  be  rid  of  self,  of 
this  intense  pre-occupation  to  survive  in 
any  form,  as  race  or  creed  or  nation,  this 


JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW.  89 

desperate  struggle  to  exist  in  name,  if 
nothing  else.  For  herein  lies  our  whole 
problem,  our  whole  temptation,  —  not  in 
the  world  around  us,  but  in  ourselves. 
What  would  we  think  of  the  soldier  who 
offered  to  serve  his  country,  but  who 
would  only  go  into  battle  on  condition 
that  his  own  life  should  be  saved  ? 

"  Ah,  but,"  I  hear  you  exclaim,  ''  that 
is  a  very  different  thing.  We  too  would 
be  willing  to  sacrifice  our  life  ;  but  we  are 
not  willing  to  sacrifice  our  principles,  our 
deepest  convictions,  which  are  dearer  to 
us  than  life."  And  I  do  not  hesitate  to 
answer  (at  least  to  those  who  have  passed 
out  of  the  dark  ages  of  superstition  and 
useless,  orthodox  formalism),  you  are  not 
called  upon  to  sacrifice  your  deepest  prin- 
ciples and  convictions ;  on  the  contrary, 
you  are  summoned  to  be  true  to  them 
by  casting  down  the  barriers  tliat  pre- 
vent their  fullest  exercise  and  freedom 


90  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW. 

in  the  widest  relation  with  your  fellow- 
men.  Search  well  your  own  heart,  and 
perhaps  you  will  find  that,  once  placing 
yourself  in  this  attitude,  throwing  off 
the  heavy  weight  of  the  past,  this  dead 
self  that  clings  to  you,  you  will  be  born 
again,  into  your  larger  heritage;  you 
will  no  longer  be  conscious  of  difference 
and  separation ;  you  will  be  one  with 
your  brother,  the  liberal  Christian  who 
has  likewise  come  out  of  the  narrowness 
of  his  creeds  and  doctrine  into  the  same 
freedom  as  you  have,  —  the  glorious  free- 
dom of  the  sons  of  God,  the  God  of 
Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob :  yes,  but 
the  God  of  the  living,  not  of  the  dead. 
Creeds  are  everywhere  falling  and  being 
disinteorrated.  losing;  their  hard-and-fast 
consistency  in  order  that  the  truth  that 
has  been  encased  in  them  shall  be  set 
free,  the  light  of  the  spirit  shall  shine 
out  like  a  star.     Christianity  as  a  sect 


JUDAISM,  OLD  AND  NEW.  91 

or  creed  has  no  compelling  force  for 
Judcaism.  The  Inquisition  could  not 
make  Christians  of  us,  nor  can  all  the 
mild  but  zealous  efforts  of  the  Presbyteri- 
ans ever  make  a  single  honest  convert. 

That  which  alone  has  power  supremely 
to  attract  is  the  divine-human  life,  of 
which  the  type  has  been  given  to  the 
world  by  a  Jew.  And  by  the  divine- 
human  life  I  mean  the  life  which  through 
every  human  experience  keeps  sight  and 
touch  of  the  divine,  —  a  life  lived  always 
in  conscious  relation  with  infinite  and 
eternal  things,  in  personal  union  and 
communion  with  a  Being  that  compre- 
hends and  transcends  our  own,  and  there- 
fore a  life  of  sublime  trust  and  assurance, 
of  loving  obedience,  and  of  immortal 
promise  and  hope.  And  the  secret  of 
that  life,  the  truth  which  it  reads  into 
the  world,  through  every  contradiction 
and  obstruction  of  human  circumstance, 


92  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW, 

every  manifestation  of  Imman  weakness, 
human  sorrow  and  sin,  is  the  trutli  of 
love,  —  of  an  infinite  and  eternal  Love 
transcending  human  imperfections,  a  di- 
vine Heart  that  reveals  itself  in  answer- 
ing; love  to  our  human  heart  and  human 
needs. 

And  is  not  such  a  life  of  the  very 
essence  of  Judaism,  you  ask  ?  And  I 
answer:  It  may  be,  but  not  while  you 
limit  and  circumscribe  your  Judaism  as 
you  do,  making  of  it  a  fetich,  a  history 
and  tradition  instead  of  an  active,  living 
principle,  a  visible  embodiment  of  the 
truth ;  not  while  you  draw  about  your- 
selves the  lines  of  a  peculiar  and  chosen 
people  that  isolate  you  and  forbid  you 
from  entering  into  the  closest  human 
ties  with  the  people  around  you;  not 
while  you  imprison  yourselves  in  the 
past,  as  in  a  Ghetto  from  whence  you 
refuse   to   emerge ;    or,    mounting   upon 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  93 

your  watch-towers,  as  the  Mohammedan 
does  upon  his,  proclaim  from  everlasting 
to  everlasting  the  unity  of  your  God. 
Come  down  from  your  watch-towers, 
come  out  of  your  Ghettos,  and  bear  wit- 
ness to  that  unity  in  the  world  to-day, 
not  as  an  abstract,  metaphysical  truth, 
but  in  spirit  and  in  deed. 

But  again  you  will  protest:  ^^ Surely 
we  Jews,  of  all  people,  are  in  the  world 
to-day,  pressing  everywhere  to  the  front, 
or  midmost  in  the  thick  of  the  struggle. 
See  how  we  crowd  the  universities,  fill 
the  high  places,  and  carry  off  the  honours, 
following,  leading  everywhere  among  the 
great  Powers  that  be.  What  other  nation, 
crushed  as  we  have  been  for  centuries 
under  the  iron  weight  of  Christendom, 
persecuted,  down-trodden,  and  oppressed, 
and  even  yet  under  the  shadow  of  our 
dungeon  walls,  could  so  rebound,  so 
spring  into  life  ready-armed  for  every 
emergency  ?  " 


94  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW. 

Ah,  then,  is  this  all  the  Ghetto  could 
teach  us,  —  to  fight  the  world's  fight,  to 
win  in  the  world's  race  ?  Can  we  find 
no  deeper  purpose,  no  higher  leading,  no 
holier  consecration  in  that  martyrdom  ? 
Have  we  not  kept  alive  and  burning  all 
these  tragic  years  the  perpetual  lamp  ? 
Have  we  not  guarded  like  a  jewel  in  the 
dark,  or,  still  more,  like  a  precious  seed 
buried  in  the  earth,  the  sacred  trust  and 
treasure  of  the  spiritual  life,  that  should 
shine  out  now  before  all  men,  should 
burst  into  splendid  flower  and  fruit  as 
soon  as  it  comes  into  the  light  of  day  ? 
And  does  it  so  shine  out  ?  Has  our 
Judaism,  whether  orthodox  or  liberal, 
blossomed  so  before  the  world  ?  Are  we 
the  leaders  of  the  religious  and  spiritual 
thought  of  the  day  ? 

In  so  far  as  we  take  part  in  it,  are  we 
not  chiefly  concerned  with  our  own  sur- 
vival, our  continued  existence  as  a  dis- 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  95 

tinct  element  and  factor?  On  the  one 
hand,  do  we  not  clutch  desperately  the 
dry  husks  that  we  hold  in  our  grasp,  of 
external  rites  and  devitalised  formulas, 
calling  them  bread  for  hungry  souls ;  or 
else  letting  these  go  and  casting  them 
aside,  do  we  not  see  our  Judaism  scat- 
tered to  the  winds,  so  that  no  man  knows 
how  to  gather  it  ? 

Let  us  not  be  deceived.  We  cannot 
save  our  Judaism  in  any  narrow,  in  any 
broad  sense  even,  unless  we  lose  it,  by' 
merging  and  adding  to  it  that  which  will 
make  it  no  longer  Judaism,  because  it  is 
something  that  the  whole  world  claims, 
and  therefore  cannot  be  the  exclusive 
prerogative  of  Judaism,  —  in  other  words, 
by  entering  into  the  larger,  spiritual  life 
which  makes  no  conditions,  no  restrictions 
necessary ;  draws  no  boundary  lines,  no 
arbitrary  and  external  distinctions  of  race 
and  creed ;  sets  up  no  barriers  between 


96  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW. 

man  and  man,  between  man  and  God; 
but  reaches  out  in  perfect  freedom,  per- 
fect oneness  with  man,  to  perfect  one- 
ness with  God. 

But,  once  again,  you  will  say  :  "  Is 
it  not  more  often  the  Christians  who 
draw  the  line  and  set  up  the  barriers; 
who  despise  and  persecute,  so  that  in 
self-defence  we  draw  back  upon  ourselves ; 
who,  when  we  hold  out  our  hand,  refuse 
to  take  it  ?  "  That  may  be ;  and  yet  I 
think  we  can  do  better  than  make  these 
our  guide.  Moreover,  we  shall  always 
find  that  for  this  there  are  special  and 
local  causes,  varying  in  nature  and  in- 
tensity, according  to  our  own  particular 
condition  and  the  condition  of  the  coun- 
try in  which  we  dwell,  but  not  neces- 
sarily radical  and  inherent  in  the  people 
around  us,  unless  we  make  them  so,  by 
insisting  upon  them  in  ourselves.  We 
must    not   forget    the    uncompromising 


JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW.  97 

attitude  which,  for  centuries  long,  the 
Jew  and  the  Christian  have  held  in  re- 
gard to  one  another,  and  which  cannot 
at  once  be  done  away  with  on  either  side. 
We  have  stood  too  long  in  mutual  dis- 
trust and  hostility  ;  our  own  race-features 
have  become  too  strongly  emphasised. 
We  are  largely  foreigners  to  the  people 
among  whom  we  live,  and  even  those 
of  us  who  are  acclimatised  still  bear 
traces  of  our  foreign  origin. 

Under  these  circumstances  we  cannot 
expect  to  come  at  once  into  complete 
understanding  and  accord.  We  can 
never  expect  it,  if,  while  apparently 
freely  mixing  at  the  surface,  we  remain 
apart  at  the  core,  covertly  trying  to  keep 
our  own  peculiarities  and  aloofness.  We 
must  cultivate  and  grow  into  perfect  free- 
dom and  fellowship,  —  slowly  and  labori- 
ously, perhaps,  for  the  task  is  a  difficult 
one,  requiring  infinite  patience  and  for- 


98  JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW. 

bearance,  infinite  tact  and  tenderness 
among  ourselves  as  well  as  in  our  deal- 
ings with  the  Christians.  Our  own  people 
must  be  gently  raised  and  lifted,  helped 
according  to  their  individual  needs,  spiri- 
tual as  well  as  material,  and  according 
to  their  capacity  to  receive,  not  knowing 
perhaps  the  goal  to  which  they  tend. 

But  those  of  us  who  have  caught  sight 
of  the  goal  must  never  lose  it  from  view, 
but  must  walk  on,  according  to  our  faith 
and  vision  of  the  larger  hope  and  promise, 
the  complete  deliverance,  which  is  as 
essentially  the  Jewish  as  it  is  the  Chris- 
tian ideal,  because  it  meatus  the  absolute 
unity,  not  alone  the  unity  of  God  with 
Himself,  one  God  as  opposed  to  many 
gods,  —  a  purely  intellectual  or  mathe- 
matical axiom,  —  but  the  unity  of  God 
with  us,  a  vitalising  principle,  a  union 
as  of  life  with  its  source,  of  parent  with 
child  ;  a  universal  love  that  folds  us  round 


JUDAISM,    OLD  AND  NEW.  99 

with  rest  and  tenderness,  making  our 
human  relations  spiritual,  our  spiritual 
relations  almost  human  in  that  sense  of 
warmth  and  closeness  that  is  so  often 
lacking.  We  can  still  repeat  our  creed  : 
"  Hear,  0  Israel,  —  and  hear  all  the 
world  besides,  —  the  Lord  our  God,  the 
Lord  is  one,"  —  one  with  us,  with  all  of 
us,  Jews  and  Christians  alike.  For  w^e 
have  taken  into  it  an  element  that  shall 
so  deepen  and  enlarge  it  as  forever  to 
redeem  it  from  self  and  every  form  of 
selfishness,  all  possibility  of  narrowness 
and  sectarianism.  No  long;er  shut  tin  q; 
itself  in,  nor  shutting  any  out,  on  the 
contrary,  it  will  welcome  all  with,  ^^  Come 
unto  me,  whatever  sect,  whatever  race, 
whatever  creed,  for  in  my  larger  love, 
my  larger  faith,  all  sects,  all  creeds  are 
one." 

Each  of  us  has  our  special  part,  our 
special    work   to    do,    which    we   cannot 


100  JUDAISM,   OLD  AND  NEW. 

shirk,  even  if  we  would,  for  it  is  forced 
upon  us.  To  the  most  indifferent  of  us 
it  must  mean  something  for  our  good  or 
ill,  our  weal  or  woe,  that  we  are  born 
Jews,  into  just  these  conditions  in  which 
we  find  ourselves,  to  work  through  them, 
if  we  can,  into  still  higher  conditions. 
We  all  stand  at  different  points  along 
the  line,  with  some  above  us,  some  be- 
low, to  help  and  to  be  helped.  Judaism 
is  to  each  of  us  a  personal  factor,  an  in- 
dividual problem,  as  well  as  a  large  race- 
question,  to  be  solved  individually  as  well 
as  collectively,  —  a  problem  as  old  as  the 
world,  which  will  be  older  yet  before  it 
is  solved.  But  if  we  see  any  light,  we 
need  not  despair.  We  can  believe,  we 
can  hope  and  trust,  and,  above  all, 
we  can  serve.  "  For  now  abideth  faith, 
hope,  and  love,  these  three ;  but  the 
greatest  of  these  is  love." 

Fehruanj,  1894.    • 


THE  CLAIM   OF  JUDAISM. 

nrHAT  history  repeats  itself  is  a  truism 
with  which  we  are  all  familiar; 
that  we  must  read  history  backward  is  a 
fact  of  which  we  are  again  and  again 
reminded  in  dealing  with  the  Jewish 
question  and  trying  to  throw  any  light 
upon  the  problem.  We  open  the  second 
volume  of  Graetz's  History  and  read  as 
follows :  — 

"  The  wider  view  which  had  been 
gained  into  the  various  relations  of  life, 
the  advance  out  of  the  narrow  circle  of 
tradition  and  inherited  customs,  produced 
schism  and  separation  amongst  the  Ju- 
dseans.  .  .  .  Thus,  there  arose  a  division 
among  the  pious"  (viz.,  the  Pharisees  and 


102  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM, 

Saddiicees).     "  The  Pharisees  can  only  be 
called  a  party  figuratively  and  by  way  of 
distinction,  ...  for    the    mass    of    the 
nation  was  inclined  to  Phariseeism,  and 
it  was  only  in  the  national  leaders  that 
its  peculiarities  became  marked.  ...  As 
expounders   of    the   law,   the    Pharisees 
formed  the  learned  body  of  the  nation. 
Their  opinions  were  framed,  their  actions 
governed   by  one    cardinal    principle, — 
the    necessity    of    preserving    Judaism. 
The  individual  and  the  state  were  to  be 
ruled  alike  by  the  laws  and  customs  of 
their  fathers.  .  .  .  From  this,  the  Phari- 
sees' view  of  life,  the  rival  opinion  of  the 
Sadducees  diverged.  .  .  .  This  party  of 
the  Sadducees,  so  sharply  opposed  to  the 
Pharisees,  .  .  .  was  composed  of  the  Ju- 
dcean  aristocracy  .  .  .  who  had  acquired 
wealth  and   authority  at  home,   or  who 
had  returned  from  foreign  embassies,  all 
having   gained,  from    closer   intercourse 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  103 

with  the  outer  workl  and  other  lands, 
freer  thought  and  more  worldly  views. 
The  national  interests  of  the  Judcean  com- 
munity were  placed  by  the  Sadducees 
above  the  Law.  ...  As  experienced  men 
of  the  world  they  felt  that  .  .  .  man 
must  not  allow  himself  to  be  kept  back 
by  religious  scruples  from  forming  politi- 
cal alliances,  .  .  .  although  by  so  doing 
he  must  inevitably  infringe  some  of  the 
injunctions  of  his  religion." 

Making  exception  of  certain  political 
aspects,  or  rather  substituting  financial 
and  mercantile  interests  in  place  of  na- 
tional considerations,  we  have  the  Jewish 
situation  as  it  stands  to-day,  a  picture  of 
our  modern  Jewish  society.  We  seem  to 
be  reading  a  page  of  contemporaneous 
Jewish  history.  In  reality,  we  are  read- 
ing of  events  that  transpired  and  of  a 
state  of  things  that  existed  one  hundred 
and  thirty-five  years  before  Christ.     For 


104  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

US  Jews  time  has  stood  still.  The  pen- 
dulum has  swayed  backward  and  forward, 
but  the  dial  hands  have  not  moved.  Two 
thousand  years  have  rolled  by,  with  their 
endless  change  upon  change  ;  the  storm  of 
modern  life  has  swept  over  us ;  we  are 
living  in  a  new  world,  in  the  midst  of 
undreamed-of  circumstance  and  condi- 
tions, —  and  we  are  still  disputing  in  the 
synagogues,  debating  along  precisely  the 
old  lines,  the  old  points  of  law,  of  orthodox 
and  unorthodox,  the  technicalities  of  usage 
and  belief,  the  sine  qua  non  of  survival. 

In  a  word,  we  are  still  Pharisees  and 
Sadducees,  rival  sects,  intent  upon  our 
own  salvation,  and  divided  among  our- 
selves :  those  of  us  who  would  keep  the 
Law  to  the  letter  in  order  to  survive,  and 
those  of  us  who  would  break  it  and  still 
survive,  —  the  worldly-wdse  in  our  own 
generation,  who  would  relax  and  infringe 
for    worldly   purpose    and    convenience. 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  105 

while  still  keeping  sacred  and  intact  the 
distinction  and  prerogative  of  race.  We 
have  not  changed  our  point  of  view  in  any 
direction ;  our  destiny  has  not  enlarged, 
our  spiritual  horizon  has  not  widened. 
The  banner  that  we  hold  aloft  is  "  Self  "  : 
self-defence,  self-preservation  are  our 
watchwords  always.  \Ye  beat  the  air, 
we  fight  with  ghosts  and  shadows ;  and 
behind  us  Judaism  looms  up,  stony  and 
unmoved,  a  great  monument  of  the  past, 
a  Sphynx  half-buried  in  the  desert  sand 
of  arid  rites  and  customs,  hoary  and  ma- 
jestic with  age,  but  dumb,  enigmatic, 
with  sealed  eyes  and  lips  that  have  no 
answer  for  our  present  urgent  need,  our 
problem  of  to-day. 

But  the  hour  has  struck.  The  Sphynx 
must  give  her  secret  to  the  world,  for  the 
world  is  waiting,  the  world  demands  a 
solution. 

From  within   and   from   without,  the 


106  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

question  is  pressing  upon  us.  Literature 
is  flooded  with  it.  Tlie  Christians,  even 
more  than  the  Jews,  are  forcing  us  to 
define  and  declare  our  position,  to  make 
it  clear  just  where  we  stand  and  what  we 
stand  for,  —  not  only  among  ourselves  as 
Jews,  but  in  relation  to  the  world  at 
large,  to  the  Christians  themselves,  the 
outside  community  in  which  we  dwell,  of 
which  we  form  a  part,  of  which  we  never 
truly  form  a  part.  On  the  one  side,  we 
have  anti-Semitism  in  one  form  or  an- 
other, whether  covert  and  disguised,  or 
else  open,  pronounced,  and  aggressive, 
and  breaking  out  where  we  had  not 
expected ;  on  the  part  of  the  Jews,  we 
have  defence,  apology,  recrimination, 
but,  above  all,  justification, — justification 
without  end,  insistence  and  reiteration  of 
their  own  peculiar  claim  and  service,  their 
plea  for  recognition  and  for  justice  that 
is  denied  them.     It  may  well  be  that  the 


THE    CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  107 

attitude  of  the  Christian  is  even  more 
blameworthy  than  our  own,  but  with  this 
we  are  not  for  the  moment  concerned. 
For  any  one  who  has  at  heart  the  true 
dignity  of  the  race,  the  real  grandeur  of 
their  achievement,  it  is  our  own  point  of 
view  that  is  of  far  graver  import. 

In  view  of  the  situation,  is  it  not  time 
that  the  strife  of  sects  should  cease,  and 
party  warfare  have  an  end,  in  order  that 
we  may  come  to  some  better  understand- 
ing among  ourselves,  some  deeper  reason 
for  the  faith  that  is  in  us,  some  larger 
answer,  some  truth  more  vital  and  more 
sacred  to  ourselves  and  to  humanity  than 
whether  or  not  we  keep  the  Mosaic  Law, 
whether  or  not  we  merge  as  one  people 
with  the  people  around  us,  —  a  truth 
larger  and  deeper  than  sect  or  race,  bind- 
ing: together  even  as  one  sect  and  race 
all  who  may  hold  it  in  common,  God's 
chosen  people  everywhere  ?     Failing  this, 


108  THE   CLAIM   OF  JUDAISM. 

are  we  doomed  perpetually  to  revolve  in 
the  small  and  narrow  circle  of  our  own 
race-questions,  our  own  peculiar  interests, 
inevitably  shut  out  by  our  own  restric- 
tions and  limitations  from  that  freedom 
and  equality  of  intercourse  that  alone 
can  insure  harmony  and  good-will  among 
men  ?  Everywhere  is  the  anomaly  of 
our  situation  made  apparent  to  us ;  again 
and  again  we  are  obliged  to  face  it. 
And  the  secret  of  that  anomaly  lies,  not 
in  the  people  around  us,  as  we  so  often 
suppose,  but  in  ourselves,  deep  below  any 
surface-difference  or  opposition,  in  the 
very  heart  of  Judaism  itself.  Let  us 
first  consider  the  claim  as  put  forth  by 
its  leaders  and  exponents,  which  may 
thus  be  formulated. 

Judaism,  in  its  ultimate  destiny,  in  its 
essence  and  its  spirit,  is  a  universal  re- 
ligion, —  the  religion  of  humanity  when 
humanity  shall  have  grown  to  its   full 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  109 

stature,  the  religion  of  the  world  when 
the  world  shall  be  capable  of  grasping 
and  realising  its  lofty  ideals. 

Judaism  in  its  actuality,  in  its  very 
constitution,  as  we  know  it  to-day,  as 
we  have  known  it  through  all  time,  in 
its  spirit  and  its  form,  is  the  religion  of 
particularism,  the  religion  of  a  peculiar 
people,  chosen  and  set  apart ;  a  peculiar 
code  especially  devised  with  the  sole  end 
and  aim  of  separation  as  the  very  basis 
and  condition  of  existence. 

And  in  order  that  this  particular  may 
become  the  universal,  what  are  we  bid- 
den to  do  ?  To  intrench  ourselves  in 
the  particular ;  to  remain  the  peculiar 
people,  the  peculiar  sect,  if  we  would 
not  incur  the  guilt  of  moral  cowardice 
and  suicide,  the  penalty  of  moral  death. 
In  order  to  teach  our  universal  truth, 
our  lofty  ideals  to  the  world,  we  must 
remain  aloof  from  the  world  except  for 


110  THE    CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

purposes  that  have  no  bearing  upon  tliis 
universal  truth ;  we  must  carefully 
guard  our  sacred  idea  from  intrusion  or 
even  contact  with  other  sacred  ideas ; 
v/e  must  read  no  sacred  books  but  our 
own ;  we  must  preach  unity,  and  we 
must  practise  the  most  rigid  exclusion, 
the  most  uncompromising  separation 
the  world  has  ever  known.  There  shall 
be  no  marrying  nor  giving  in  marriage, 
either  of  the  human  or  the  spiritual. 
Soul  shall  not  meet  soul,  life  shall  not 
be  added  unto  life,  because  we  are  shut 
off  from  the  soul-life  of  the  communit}^ 
in  which  we  dwell.  We  are  one  in  the 
body,  so  to  speak,  —  that  is  to  say,  for 
temporal  purpose  and  convenience, — 
but  in  spirit  we  are  wide  asunder. 

And  I  ask.  Can  such  a  union  ever  prove 
blessed,  or  beautiful,  or  happy  ?  Must 
it  not  always  be  subject  to  the  jars  and 
friction  to  which  we  so  constantly  see 


THE    CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  HI 

ourselves  exposed,  to  hopeless  contradic- 
tion and  misunderstanding?  If,  as  we 
claim,  we  have  the  world's  truth  in  our 
keeping,  shall  we  therefore  keep  it  for 
ourselves  ?  Were  it  not  larger,  wiser, 
grander  to  give  it  to  the  world  at  the  cost 
of  any  personal  sacrifice  to  ourselves ; 
to  make  the  great  renunciation,  to  die 
to  self,  to  the  particular,  as  people,  race, 
or  individual,  in  order  that  we  may  live 
to  tlie  universal,  the  larger  life  and  ideal, 
the  deeper  purpose  of  humanity ;  to  lose 
our  life  if  thereby  we  might  save  it,  by 
setting  free  the  truth  that  is  our  life,  and 
making  known  as  never  before  the  Unity 
of  God,  the  universal  Father,  and  the 
common  brotherhood  of  man  ? 

But  it  is  just  here  that  the  fallacy  lies, 
the  paradox,  that  is  deeper  than  any  ques- 
tion of  expediency,  of  whether  or  not 
we  are  comfortable  among  the  nations, 
and  amid  our  surroundings  and  ch'cum- 


112  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

stance.  It  lies  in  our  belief,  our  clinging 
to  the  idea  that  Judaism  is  the  universal 
religion,  that  it  ever  can  or  will  adapt  it- 
self to  the  needs  of  men  of  every  race,  men 
who  have  not  inherited  it  in  the  blood. 
Our  mistake  lies  in  supposing  that  it, 
and  it  alone,  contains  the  whole  truth, 
the  absolute  truth,  and  nothing  but  the 
truth,  the  salvation  of  all  mankind  ;  that 
before  it,  was  no  truth,  and  that  since,  no 
new  truth  has  come  into  the  world,  no  new 
sacred  principle  or  method  of  life,  and, 
therefore,  nothing  shall  be  added  thereto 
nor  taken  therefrom ;  that  in  the  matter 
of  spiritual  or  religious  truth  we  Jews 
have  everything  to  teach  and  nothing  to 
learn,  because  Judaism  holds  the  essence 
of  all  that  is  good  in  the  world;  that 
whatever  in  Christianity  is  not  Judaism 
is  paganism  ;  that  whatever  Jesus  taught 
that  Hillel  had  not  taught  before  him  is 
nought,  and   worse    than   nought;  that 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  113 

finally,  in  the  Mosaic  code  and  the 
moral  law,  the  reign  of  justice  upon 
earth,  is  contained  all  the  spiritual  un- 
foldment,  the  sacred  revealing,  all  the 
help  and  leading  that  we  need. 

But  we  forget  that  even  in  Biblical 
times,  when  Judaism  shone  out  in  its 
greatest  splendour,  its  moral  supremacy 
among  the  nations,  it  made  no  such  claim 
as  this  of  perfection ;  it  was  always  a 
prophetic  religion,  a  religion  of  promise 
that  pointed  somewhere,  somehow  to  a 
fulfilment,  a  deliverance,  a  mysterious 
coming  —  of  a  person,  a  kingdom  —  that 
should  complete  and  establish  it  upon 
earth.  Already  in  those  far  distant  days 
there  was  a  lack  felt,  there  was  a  link 
wanting,  a  something  that  should  bind 
men  close  to  God,  a  way  of  holiness,  a 
path  whereby  to  approach,  whereby  to 
bring  Him  near  "  that  sitteth  upon  the 
circle  of  the  earth,  and  the  inhabitants 


114  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

thereof  are  as  grasshoppers."  Hence  the 
ceremonial  code,  with  all  its  mechanical 
contrivance  to  wrap  God's  presence  round 
the  trivial,  common  things  of  daily  life, 
literally  to  nail  Him  on  the  doorposts,  to 
bind  Him  as  frontlets  upon  brow  and 
arms,  and  knit  Him  upon  the  fringes  of 
the  garments.  And  hence,  above  all, 
the  moral  code,  making  known  the  terms 
and  the  conditions  of  man's  relation  with 
his  Maker. 

But  even  then  men  already  dimly 
felt  that  the  moral  law  does  not  suffice, 
does  not  necessarily  bring  us  close  to 
God.  On  the  contrary,  it  may  estrange 
us  from  Him  by  raising  that  terrible  con- 
sciousness of  sin,  of  the  wide  gap  between 
the  human  and  the  divine,  between  our 
poor  righteousness  and  His  perfection, 
not  to  be  bridged  over  by  any  effort  on 
our  part.  Or,  again,  it  may  arouse  that 
false  self- righteousness  and  spiritual  pride, 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  115 

SO  sure  of  itself,  so  confident  in  its  own 
strength  and  sight,  which  is  even  further 
removed  from  God  than  weali  human 
sinning.  And  so  David,  the  man  who 
sinned,  was  the  man  near  God's  heart, 
and,  according  to  Isaiah,  "  Who  is  blind 
as  he  that  is  perfect,  and  blind  as  the 
Lord's  servant  ? " 

For  there  is  a  deeper,  truer  vision  yet 
to  be  attained  that  brings  to  light  the 
hidden,  secret  things  of  God's  love  and 
wisdom,  rather  than  man's  imperfect 
judgment,  his  paltry  verdict  of  righteous 
and  unrighteous ;  there  is  a  more  spirit- 
ual perception  than  that  revealed  by  the 
moral  law,  for  it  comes  from  a  more  in- 
timate sense  of  dependence,  a  closer  com- 
munion, nay,  an  absolute  oneness  of  spirit 
with  Spirit,  which  cannot  be  severed  by 
any  weakness  or  error  of  the  flesh. 

But  we  Jews  are  not  willhiii;  thus  to 
transcend  the  Law  and  the  Prophets,  to 


116  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

accept  the  absolute  and  unconditioned 
unity  of  God  with  all  His  creatures.  We 
still  cling  to  our  separateness  in  the  inner 
as  well  as  the  outer  lif e^  trying  in  vain  to 
make  ourselves  one  with  Him  through 
outward  rule  and  practice,  through  works, 
not  faith  ;  in  what  we  do,  rather  than 
what  we  are. 

And  so  it  happens  almost  of  necessity 
that  when  the  framework  of  the  rabbini- 
cal law  falls  away,  for  the  most  part  we 
are  left  without  God  in  our  lives.  We 
lose  the  sense  of  divine  things  even  in 
the  crude,  realistic,  and  anthropomorphic 
way  in  which  we  once  possessed  it,  —  the 
touch  of  the  spirit,  —  and,  therefore,  our 
spiritual  life  becomes  barren  and  ex- 
hausted. We  remain  an  ethical  people, 
but  we  cease  to  be  a  religious  people. 
Once  a  year  perhaps,  on  the  occasion  of 
a  great  and  solemn  festival,  we  give  up 
our  business   and  wander  to  the    syna- 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  Ill 

gogue,  listen  to  the  chants  and  the  sacred 
intoning  that  carry  us  back  among  the 
dead,  into  the  dim  vista  of  the  past,  and 
go  home  satisfied  that  we  are  still  Jews 
at  heart,  in  sentiment  and  association, 
thankful  that  we  are  not  as  other  men, 
but  that  we  can  so  easily  leave  supersti- 
tion behind  us,  and  content  to  have  no 
other  link  with  our  people  and  with  God. 
I  have  said  that  the  present  situation 
was  analogous  with  the  past.  In  a  sense 
this  is  true,  and  in  a  sense  the  position 
of  the  modern  Jew  is  different  from  any- 
thing that  has  gone  before  ;  for  the  condi- 
tions of  modern  society  are  so  entirely 
different.  Everything  is  so  fluent,  plas- 
tic, and  changing  from  moment  to  mo- 
ment ;  everything  goes  at  so  quick  a 
pace,  circulates  so  widely,  freely,  and  rap- 
idly. Thought  is  so  active  and  alert,  life 
is  at  such  high  pressure  and  such  close 
pressure  everywhere,  that  the  Jew,  even 


118  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

more  than  others,  keen  and  sensitive  to 
these  influences,  is  caught  up  and  whirled 
along  in  the  great  stream  of  physical 
forces.  He  finds  more  and  more  difficulty 
in  conforming  to  the  exigencies  of  his  re- 
ligion, so  that  only  an  ever-diminishing 
number  are  willing  to  make  the  sacrifices 
imposed  upon  them.  But  he  drifts  with 
the  tide,  enjoying  to  the  full,  the  play  and 
freedom  of  long  unused  activities,  the 
stimulus  and  excitement  of  the  struQ:g:le, 
until  a  stern  voice  recalls  him  to  hnnself . 
In  the  midst  of  the  great,  rushing,  inex- 
orable present  that  will  not  wait,  but 
hurries  him  along,  rises  the  great,  fixed, 
inexorable  past  that  bids  him  halt : 
^^  Thus  far,  and  no  farther.  Thou  canst 
not  if  thou  wouldst  be  free.  Look  back! 
four  thousand  years !  over  the  ruins  of 
empire,  the  tombs  of  nations,  the  rise 
and  fall  of  false  faiths  and  perishable 
gods.      There   never   was  a   time  when 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  119 

Israel  did  not  exist.  Shall  Israel  cease 
to  exist  witli  thee  ?  "  A  solemn  call,  and 
we  Jews  must  feel  it  so.  We  cannot 
make  the  choice  lightly,  or  for  any  slight 
or  worldly  cause.  Above  all,  we  cannot 
drift,  we  cannot  shirk  our  destiny.  We 
must  meet  and  face  it,  whatever  it  bring, 
whatever  it  take  away.  But  let  us  be 
sure  we  hear  the  voice  aright.  Let  us 
listen,  not  to  the  voice  of  tradition  and 
authority,  of  human  circumstance  and 
history,  of  human  glory  and  survival, 
not  to  the  call  of  the  Scribes  and  the 
Pharisees,  but  to  the  voice  of  the 
Prophets,  the  men  of  vision  who  pro- 
claimed the  eternal,  the  everlasting 
Idea,  yet  to  be  attained,  yet  to  be  ful- 
filled, where  others  saw  only  the  imper- 
fect human  fulfilment. 

Let  us  not  be  deceived.  It  is  not 
enough  merely  to  survive.  The  test  of 
an  ideal,  its  true  vitality,  consists  not  in 


120  THE   CLAIM   OF  JUDAISM. 

survival,  but  in  its  power  of  growth.     It 
must  not  only  have  roots,  but  it  must  be 
free  to  rise  and  expand  out  of  the  dark 
earth  in  which  it  has  been  protected  and 
encased,  into  the  universal  sunshine  and 
air.     It  must  not  fear  to  crumble  into 
dust,  like  some  dead  thing  at  a  touch  from 
outside.     On  the  contrary,  it  must  be  ex- 
posed to  all  the  winds  of  heaven  and  the 
tempests  that  shake  the  earth,  all  adverse 
and  benign  influence,  using  all  for  pur- 
poses and  material  of  growth,   steadily 
rising  and  spreading  always,  reaching  out 
mighty,  outstretching  arms  and  generous 
branch  after  branch,  where  all  men  may 
come  and  find  shelter  and  repose.     Let  us 
not  be  deceived.     The  Jewish  idea  sur- 
vives, but  only  on  condition  that  it  shall 
not  so  expand,  that  it  shall  not  rise  into 
freedom  and  light ;  only  on  condition  that 
it  shall  remain  fixed  and  stationary,  pro- 
longing  its   existence    by  artificial   and 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  121 

external   means,  rather  than  by  process 
of  inner  and  organic  growth. 

And  what,  then,  is  this  Jewish  ideal 
for  which  we  must  live  or  die,  in  contra- 
distinction to  the  Christian  ideal  ? 

The  Jewish  ideal,  we  are  told  by  those 
who  would  draw  the  distinction,  is  jus- 
tice. The  Christian  ideal  is  love.  The 
Jewish  ideal  places  the  emphasis  on  the 
life,  the  practice,  the  Law  fulfilled  as  law, 
as  duty,  as  morality  enforced  from  on 
high.  "Thus  saith  the  Lord."  The 
Christian  places  it  on  faith,  on  the  Law 
fulfilled  as  love,  which  gives  the  impulse, 
the  motive,  and  the  power  whereby 
to  fulfil  the  Law,  and  therefore  the  life 
of  the  moral  deed. 

Is  there  then  radical  opposition  and 
antagonism  between  the  two  ?  Does  the 
one  exclude  the  other  ?  I  think  it  does, 
unless  we  are  willing  to  believe  that  the 
greater  includes  the  less,  the  whole  in- 


122  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

eludes  the  part,  reconciles  and  completes 
it.  Only  through  love  is  the  true  moral 
life  attained,  the  moral  law  fulfilled^  ex- 
plained, and  justified,  touched  and  quick- 
ened into  a  passionate  holiness,  instead 
of  a  soulless  code  of  external  obligation 
and  conformity.  Love  is  religion,  the 
binding  force  of  the  universe,  —  that 
which  binds  man  close  to  man,  which 
binds  man  close  to  God.  Only  to  the 
eye  of  love  that  pierces  the  very  heart 
of  things  and  searches  the  inward  part 
and  reins,  can  justice  ever  be  revealed. 

And  this  then  is  the  crucial  test,  the 
kernel  of  difference.  We  may  do  away 
with  rabbinism,  we  may  strip  away  husk 
after  husk  of  outward  distinction,  all 
artificial  barriers  and  enactments  of  sepa- 
ration, every  badge  and  label  that  di- 
vides the  Jew  from  the  rest  of  the  world; 
but  here,  and  here  alone,  hidden  in  the 
depths  of  the  siDiritual  life,  is  the  truth 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  123 

that  shall  set  us  free  and  make  us  one 
with  our  fellows,  because  it  makes  all 
men  truly  brothers,  children  of  one  lov- 
ing Father,  and  all  alike  sharers  of  the 
divine  life.  "  For  there  is  no  difference 
between  the  Jew  and  the  Greek ;  for  the 
same  Lord  over  all  is  rich  unto  those 
who   call  upon  Him." 

How  little  the  world  has  yet  realised 
or  even  understood  this  ideal,  how  far 
removed  is  the  kingdom  of  peace  on 
earth  and  good-will  to  men,  no  people 
better  than  the  Jews  can  testify,  —  "  in 
stripes  and  in  imprisonments,  in  wan- 
derings by  land  and  sea,  in  cold  and 
darkness,  hunger  and  thirst,  patience 
and  long-suffering."  For  that  very  rea- 
son are  we,  the  Jews,  above  all  others, 
the  ones  to  hasten  its  coming,  to  give 
our  life,  our  soul,  to  further,  not  to  hin- 
der it ;  to  make  it  a  reality,  not  a  mockery, 
an  actuality  as  well  as  an  ideal.     Then, 


124  THE   CLAIM   OF  JUDAISM. 

and  then  only,  "  will  death  be  swallowed 
up  in  victory  ;  and  the  Lord  God  will 
wipe  away  tears  from  oft'  all  faces  ;  and 
the  rebuke  of  His  people  shall  He  take 
away  from  olf  all  the  earth :  for  the 
Lord  hath  spoken  it." 

''  But  we  are  born,"  you  say,  "  into  a 
race  and  religion."  Yes,  but  we  must 
be  born  again  into  larger  and  higher 
conditions  than  this  race  and  this  reli- 
gion permit,  into  more  spiritual  rela- 
tions, not  only  with  our  fellow-beings, 
but  with  God ;  into  a  more  vitalised  and 
liberating  faith.  We  must  be  born  again, 
not  of  the  flesh,  but  of  the  spirit,  which 
apprehends  God,  which  recognises  and 
reveals  Him  in  close  and  tender  rela- 
tion, personally  and  individually,  to  each 
and  all  of  us.  And  this  is  the  Messiah, 
the  Counsellor  and  inward  messenger 
that  brings  peace  to  the  soul,  —  not  a 
man,  a  God,  but   the  spirit  that  abides 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  125 

with  all  men  and  makes  God  manifest 
according  to  our  capacity  to  receive  and 
apprehend  Him.  Whether  or  not  this 
spirit  has  ever  incarnated  itself  in  its 
human  and  ideal  perfection  in  any  being 
that  has  walked  the  earth,  any  actual  or 
historic  personage,  or  whether  it  will  ever 
so  incarnate  itself,  is  the  point  where 
Jews  and  Christians  divide. 

But  whatever  theology  may  have  done 
to  distort  and  pervert,  whatever  modifi- 
cation and  foreign  admixture  may  have 
crept  in,  in  passing  through  so  many 
minds,  so  many  families  and  races  of 
men,  the  Messianic  idea  is  no  less  essen-  iX 
tial  to  Judaism  than  to  Christianity. 
Without  it  Judaism  is  maimed,  imper- 
fect, and  can  never  hope  to  carry  salva- 
tion to  the  Gentiles  and  publish  peace  to 
all  the  world.  We  hear  little  of  it  now 
among  the  Jews ;  but  we  cannot  let  it  go 
as  we  have  done  from  our  spiritual  con- 


126  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

sciousness  without  spiritual  loss.  We 
cannot  let  it  lapse,  as  we  have  clone,  or  be 
lost  in  some  vague  millennial  dream  of 
temporal  welfare  and  prosperity;  for  it 
has  grown  to  be  a  personal  gift  and  pos- 
session of  mankind,  a  psychological  fact, 
a  vital  necessity  of  man's  inmost  being. 
Once  having  conceived  this  ultimate  re- 
demption, nothing  short  of  a  divinely-per- 
fected humanity  can  content  us,  —  man 
rising  to  God,  God  stooping  to  man,  the 
human  and  divine  so  merged  that  each  is 
recognised  in  and  of  the  other,  a  spiritual 
presence  everywhere.  There  is  no  idol- 
atry in  this  when  rightly  understood. 
On  the  contrary,  it  does  away  with  idol- 
atry ;  for  it  places  no  concrete  image,  no 
visible  form,  between  God  and  His  crea- 
tures, but  draws  each  man  m  his  own 
spirit,  in  his  own  likeness,  up  to  God, 
accordino;  as  God  has  fashioned  him. 
The  work  of  the  intellect  is  sino-ular. 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  127 

Men  have  intuitively  apprehended  the 
great  spiritual  truths.  Then  comes  the 
intellect,  weighing  and  measuring  and 
casting  everything  into  its  own  mould, 
shaping  and  adapting  the  truths  of  God 
to  suit  men's  limited  comprehension;  and 
so  we  have  dogma,  hard  and  unyielding, 
almost  quenching  the  spirit  and  the 
truth.  Then  when  the  intellect  has  out- 
grown its  own  limitations,  and  when  the 
world  is  ready  for  a  purer  form  of  the 
spirit,  a  clearer  expression  of  the  truth, 
this  self-same  intellect  turns  and  rends 
what  it  had  created,  destroys  what  it 
had  so  elaborately  built  up.  But  the 
spirit  shines  out  undimmed,  more  lumi- 
nous than  ever.  Thus  the  idea  of  God 
has  undergone  many  idolatrous  phases. 
The  idea  of  the  Messiah  must  pass 
through  the  same  process  of  purification 
and  evolution. 

The  problem  of  Judaism  is  more  diffi- 


128  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

cult  than  that  of  any  other  religion.  We 
are  constantly  being  recruited,  as  it  were, 
from  below.  The  tide  of  immigration 
pours  into  us  its  troubled  waters,  —  the 
ignorant,  the  superstitious,  the  outcast, 
the  outlandish  of  the  nations,  the  slaves  of 
centuries  of  bondage.  To  feed,  to  clothe, 
to  shelter  them,  to  give  them  bodily  com- 
forts, is  a  task  taxing  our  utmost  strength. 
To  feed  them  spiritually  is  a  task  almost 
beyond  our  strength.  For  a  while  they 
may  be  satisfied  to  practise  their  religion, 
to  shut  themselves  off  from  other  men ; 
but  who  can  doubt  that,  breathing  the 
air  of  freedom,  scenting  the  battle  from 
afar,  like  so  many  others,  they  will  cast 
off  the  chains  that  oppress  them  and 
fling  themselves  into  the  fray,  the  mad 
rush  and  struggle  for  material  things  that 
leaves  neither  time  nor  room  for  other 
pre-occupations  ?  Says  Mr.  Zangwill,  — 
"Russia   and   America   are    the    two 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  129 

strongholds  of  the  race,  and  Russia  is 
pouring  her  streams  into  America,  where 
they  will  be  made  free  men  and  free 
thinkers.  It  is  in  America,  then,  that 
the  last  great  battle  of  Judaism  will  be 
fought  out ;  amid  the  temples  of  the 
New  \Yorld  it  will  make  its  last  struggle 
to  survive." 

The  strength  of  the  Jewish  life  lies,  I 
am  told,  "  in  the  great  body  of  sound, 
normal,  commonplace  lives  which  go  to 
make  up  the  strength  or  the  weakness  (?) 
of  the  life  of  every  community."  But 
let  us  look  a  little  more  closely  into  this 
same  body  of  "  normal,  commonplace 
lives."  Shall  we  not  find  here,  as  else- 
where, a  lurking  discontent,  a  sense  of 
personal  grievance  and  disadvantage,  and 
at  the  same  time  a  galled  and  sensitive 
pride  that  chafes  under  their  Judaism  ? 
And,  one  hardly  dares  whisper  it,  shall 
we  not  also  find  even  here  anti-Semi- 
9 


130  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

tism  cropping  out  against  any  class  less 
qualified,  less  modernised  than  their 
own  ? 

But  even  if  such  a  sound  body  of 
commonplace  lives  existed,  I  do  not  think 
they  would  fitly  represent  Judaism,  un- 
less Judaism  is  content  to  remain  a  com- 
monplace and  insignificant  element  in 
modern  civilisation.  On  the  contrary, 
I  think  there  will  only  be  strength  in 
Israel  when  there  shall  arise  great  lead- 
ers, lifted  above  just  this  sordid  common- 
placeness,  this  official  and  banded  Phil- 
istinism ;  men  of  daring  thought  and 
action,  in  touch  with  their  people  through 
sympathy  and  appreciation,  but  in  touch 
also  with  the  larger  spiritual  and  reli- 
gious movement  of  their  times ;  men 
who  feel  acutely  the  need,  and  the  heavy 
weight  of  their  responsibility,  —  who  are 
not  afraid  to  pluck  religion  out  of  the 
temples   and   synagogues   where   it   has 


THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM.  131 

slumbered,  out  of  the  dead  forms  and 
effete  rites,  and  carry  it  into  the  heart 
of  life,  to  set  free  the  God  so  long  im- 
prisoned in  the  ark  of  the  covenant,  and 
make  Him  a  living  presence  in  the 
world ;  men  who  have  renounced  the 
visible  temporal  church  in  order  to 
enter  the  Church  Universal,  the  church 
invisible  that  is  not  of  time  or  space, 
where  the  saints  and  seers  of  all  time, 
the  "illumined"  of  all  sects,  all  creeds, 
and  all  races  have  ever  worshipped  and 
will  worship  through  the  ages. 

They  only  are  the  saviours  of  the  people 
who,  recognising  the  tremendous  signifi- 
cance of  the  past,  recognise  also  the  tre- 
mendous significance  of  the  present ;  who 
are  alive  and  awake  to  the  call,  the 
message  of  the  hour,  ready  for  joyful 
sacrifice  and  fulfihnent,  knowing  the 
time  has  come  when  Israel  shall  take 
her  place  among  the  nations,  her  war- 


132  THE   CLAIM  OF  JUDAISM. 

fare  accomplished,  triumphant,  crowned 
with  the  spiritual  crown  of  sacrifice,  the 
sign  and  promise  of  a  kingdom  that  is 
not  of  the  earth. 

Mmj,  1894. 


THE  TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

T  ONG  ago  has  our  nineteenth  century 
^^^  been  branded  as  an  age  of  unbelief 
and  materialism,  of  vanished  faith  and 
ideals,  of  religious  indifference  or  positive 
revolt.  In  reality  it  has  been  a  period  of 
intense  religious  ferment  and  upheaval, 
of  moral  and  spiritual  conflict,  of  religious 
growth  and  evolution.  It  has  been  a  time 
to  try  men's  souls,  to  test  and  strain  to 
the  utmost  the  faith  that  was  in  them  ;  for 
it  has  seemed  that  the  powers  of  light  as 
well  as  of  darkness,  the  dictates  of  reason, 
of  science,  and  of  conscience,  conspired  to 
force  man  to  surrender,  to  deny  his  high- 
est right  and  privilege,  to  make  him  the 
tool,  the  victim  of  blind  chance  or  blind 


134  THE    TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

necessity,  of  laws  so  fixed  and  inexorable 
as  forever  to  chain  him  to  matter  and 
hopelessly  bind  the  wings  of  his  spirit. 
Happily  that  time  has  passed,  or  is  pass- 
ing y  and  there  is  no  more  significant  fact 
than  the  changed  attitude  of  the  world's 
thought  to-day  on  these  great  topics. 
Like  the  light  slowly  creeping  over  the 
mountain  tops,  God  is  coming  back  into 
His  world.  His  name  appears  again 
where  it  had  been  banished.  Men  are 
no  longer  afraid  of  that  highest  concep- 
tion of  their  intellect  and  heart,  that  su- 
preme postulate  of  their  reason,  the  sole 
cause  and  end  of  their  being. 

But  it  is  a  changed  conception  that 
they  hold,  and  one  that  no  longer  fits  in 
with  the  old  theologies,  the  established 
creeds  and  worship,  the  limitations  of  doc- 
trine and  sect.  Within  the  churches  to 
some  extent,  but  still  more  outside  of  the 
churches,  a  new  current  has  set  in,  —  a 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  135 

breaking  free  from  dogma  and  prescribed 
form  ;  a  broadening  and  expansion  of  the 
religious  life  that  shows  a  new  force  at 
work,  —  a  force  that  men  had  tried  to 
imprison  within  fixed  and  narrow  articles 
of  faith  (so-called),  but  that  can  no  more 
be  imprisoned  than  the  wind  can  be  im- 
prisoned, "  which  bloweth,  like  the  spirit, 
where  it  listeth."  It  is  not  that  a  new 
religion  has  come  into  the  world,  but  that 
religion  is  being  born  from  a  lower  to  a 
higher  plane,  —  out  of  the  realm  of  ma- 
terial forms,  the  systems  men  have  built 
around  it,  the  body  with  which  it  has 
been  clothed,  into  the  realm  of  spirit, 
a  purely  inner  kingdom,  where  alone 
man  meets  God,  and  God  meets  man. 
According  to  the  freedom  with  which  any 
religion  expands  to  this  ideal,  without 
losing  its  content  and  identity  ;  according 
to  the  richness  and  the  fulness  of  the 
spiritual  life,  the  closeness  of  union  and 


136  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

communion  so  attained,  — will  be  the 
measure  and  the  scope  of  that  religion  as 
a  factor  and  a  working-power  in  the 
world's  spiritual  progress.  To  this  tri- 
bunal now  comes  every  sect  of  Christen- 
dom and  every  form  of  Judaism. 

We  Jews  are  apt  to  think  that  we  are 
not  broken  up  into  sects  like  other  reli- 
gions; that,  in  spite  of  external  and  in- 
tellectual difference,  a  Jew  is  a  Jew  the 
world  over,  bound  by  some  ineradicable 
bond  that  no  force  of  circumstance  or 
environment  has  the  power  or  the  right 
to  break.  In  reality,  we  are  broken  up 
into  almost  as  many  sects  as  units.  Each 
man  is  a  law  unto  himself,  —  that  is  to 
say,  he  is  an  expounder  and  interpreter 
of  the  law  according  to  his  own  wisdom. 
The  division  of  "  orthodox "  and  ''  re- 
form "  suffices  to  cover  the  whole  range 
of  Judaism,  the  whole  field  of  religious 
activity  and  debate,  embracing  opinions 


THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  137 

the  most  diverse  and  contradictory,  and 
types  the  most  opposite  that  can  be  con- 
ceived. At  one  extreme  we  have  medi- 
aevalism,  the  still  unburied  ghost,  wrapped 
round  with  all  the  mummery  of  the  past, 
—  dead  form,  dead  rites,  dead  letter,  — 
that  haunts  the  Ghetto  and  bids  us  be- 
ware how  we  step  beyond  those  sacred 
walls.  At  the  other  extreme  we  have 
nineteenth  century  progress  and  reform, 
the  liberal  and  enlightened  rabbi,  who 
tells  us,  — 

"  Assuredly,  if  you  will,  we  are  ready 
to  give  up  our  peculiar  traits  and  customs, 
if  these  offend;  to  abolish  religious  or 
ceremonial  rites  which  the  spirit  of  the 
age  cannot  approve ;  to  abandon  fringes 
and  phylacteries.  Nay,  more,  indeed,  we 
have  already  done  so,  and  have  consigned 
them  to  the  lumber-room  of  the  past,  in 
order  to  make  room  for  the  decrees  of 
modern  a3stheticism." 


138  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

And  this  accomplished,  let  me  ask, 
What  have  you  given  in  their  place  ? 
What  have  you  now  to  give  that  will 
take  the  place  of  so  much  that  was  vital 
and  integral  to  the  faith  as  your  fathers 
and  forefathers  conceived  it^  and  as  many 
still  conceive  it,  —  the  vast  system  of 
rules  and  regulations  that  has  been  so  la- 
boriously and  so  conscientiously  built  up, 
on  which  all  the  spiritual  energies,  the 
practical  piety  and  devotion  of  your  peo- 
ple, have  been  expended  for  untold  gene- 
rations; the  method  of  their  holiness, 
by  which,  however  crudely,  they  brought 
God  into  their  lives,  in  personal,  concrete, 
and  direct  relation,  —  the  very  life  of 
Judaism  in  the  sense  that  it  permeates 
the  whole  scheme  and  process  of  dailj^ 
living  ?  To  take  all  this  away,  to  set  all 
this  aside,  and  put  nothing  in  its  place, 
is  to  leave  a  gap  which  the  ordinary  mind, 
the    average   religious   consciousness   of 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  139 

men,  cannot  possibly  supply.  What  have 
you  now  to  give,  what  have  you  now  to 
teach,  to  offset  the  world* s  teachings  and 
the  world's  gifts  ? 

Look  around  you.  See  the  defection 
everywhere,  the  indifference,  the  neglect 
and  lack  of  interest  in  things  spiritual  and 
religious,  the  widespread  and  ever-grow- 
ing unbelief  and  secularism.  From  all 
sides  sounds  a  cry  of  warning  and  alarm. 
In  Germany,  we  are  told,  "ninety-five  per 
cent  of  the  Jewish  youth  is  atheistic,  and 
at  best  utterly  indifferent.  The  other  five 
per  cent  are  divided  between  orthodoxy 
and  reform."  In  England,  says  a  reverend 
doctor,  "  it  is  a  critical  time  for  Judaism. 
The  synagogues  become  less  and  less  fre- 
quented. In  vain  they  are  made  splendid 
and  luxurious ;  in  vain  the  organ  lends 
its  solemn,  awe-inspiring  strains,  — .  .  . 
the  synagogues  are  less  and  less  fre- 
quented."    Says  another  authority,  "  Our 


140  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

people  are  spiritually  starved ;  "  and  from 
Jewish  mothers  comes  the  plaint,  — 

''  What  shall  we  teach  our  children  ? 
Is  there  any  reason  why  we  should  grow 
up  and  raise  our  little  ones  without  re- 
ligion? .  .  .  For  we  are  raising  them 
without  religion.  I  repeat,  we  are  raising 
up,  here  in  our  midst,  and  in  the  midst 
of  other  congregations,  a  generation  with- 
out religion.  Oh,  yes,  we  have  our  Sun- 
day-schools. You  send  your  children 
there,  but  for  what?  To  learn  ancient 
history  and  the  rudiments  of  a  dead 
language.  Do  you  call  that  religion? 
.  .  .  Religion  means  far  more  than  the 
repetition  of  a  series  of  kings  or  judges, 
or  a  list  of  tribes,  with  perhaps  the  abil- 
ity stumblingly  to  read  through  a  given 
number  of  Hebrew  prayers  with  their 
translations.  .  .  .  All  the  knowledge  of 
an  ancient  history  and  of  a  dead  lan- 
guage will   never   hold  one  child  loyal 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  141 

to  the  faith  of  his  fathers.  .  .  .  Whose 
the  fault,  and  where  does  the  responsi- 
biUty  lie  ?  It  matters  not.  .  .  .  But 
rather  what  is  the  remedy  ?  " 

And  from  opposite  camps  we  hear  the 
old,  old  cry,  —  "  Orthodoxy  "  on  the  one 
side,  and  on  the  other  "  Reform  ;  "  neither 
seeing  the  pitfalls  of  the  other,  neither 
seeing  that  it  is  just  on  these  rocks  that 
we  have  split  and  gone  to  pieces.  The 
props  have  been  removed,  the  strongholds 
deserted,  that  had  long  been  guarded  at 
such  fearful  cost ;  and  Judaism  has  been 
left  defenceless  to  battle  with  the  world 
alone,  and  open  to  the  enemy. 

^^Nay,  not  so  fast,"  you  will  protest; 
"  Judaism  does  not  stand,  does  not  fall, 
with  orthodoxy  or  reform.  Judaism  is 
founded  on  a  rock,  —  the  rock  of  the 
moral  law,  firm  as  the  foundations  of 
the  earth,  that  cannot  be  moved.  All 
else  may  pass,  all  forms,  all  shows,  but 


142  THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

this  remains.  Judaism  in  its  essence  is 
so  simple,  so  sublime  a  thing:  not  a 
complex  ecclesiasticism,  not  a  doctrinal 
or  dogmatic  creed,  not  a  theory  or  ab- 
stract speculation,  but  a  religion  of  life, 
the  moral  life  itself,  the  moral  law  or- 
dained by  God,  — '  To  do  justice,  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God/  " 

A  simple  code,  no  doubt;  and  yet 
how  does  it  come  that  throughout  our 
history,  in  tragic  and  in  prosperous  times, 
in  order  to  bring  it  even  dimly  to 
the  apprehension  of  our  people,  to  make 
it  valid  as  a  working  principle,  —  "a 
religion  of  life,"  as  you  say,  —  it  has 
always  been  found  necessary  to  supple- 
ment it  with  the  ceremonial  code,  which, 
with  all  its  intricacy  and  its  ramifica- 
tions, has  been  more  easily  and  more 
lovingly  followed?  In  vain  did  the 
Prophets  exhort  and  denounce :  in  their 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  143 

days,  as  in  ours,  we  have  always  been 
able  and  willing  to  bring  our  sacrifice 
and  burnt-offering.  The  sacrifice  of  the 
heart  we  have  not  yet  learned  how  to 
bring.  The  Law,  even  in  its  most  literal, 
most  technical  shape,  has  been  our  con- 
solation and  delight ;  upon  it  have  we 
meditated  day  and  night.  And  not  with- 
out reason,  for  it  has  had  its  roots  deep 
down  in  the  very  constitution  of  our 
Judaism ;  it  has  been  our  link  and  medi- 
ator with  the  divine,  our  religion,  inas- 
much as  it  bound  us  to  one  another  and 
bound  us  to  God  at  the  same  time  that 
it  effectually  separated  us  from  the  rest 
of  mankind.  Can  we  wonder,  then,  that 
this  being  withdrawn,  the  Law  having 
lost  its  hold  and  stringency,  its  unifying 
and  sanctifying  power,  the  people  should 
scatter  and  fall  apart,  should  waver  and 
grow  confused  in  their  allegiance,  and 
that  the  house  should  be  divided  against 
itself  ? 


144  THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

And  the  cause  of  this  does  not  lie 
merely  m  the  removal  of  outward  re- 
straint and  compulsion,  but  still  more 
in  the  lack  of  inward  compulsion  and 
harmony,  the  need  of  an  inner  motive 
and  incentive  that  should  give  sanctity 
and  consecration  to  life.  Not  merely 
that  we  should  set  aside  intellectual  dif- 
ference, and  unite  among  ourselves  upon 
some  common  ground,  some  point  of  law 
or  doctrine,  some  common  rule  of  life 
even,  but  that  in  the  very  heart  of  life 
there  should  be  unity  and  peace.  And  for 
this  we  must  look  deeper  than  the  cere- 
monial, deeper  even  than  the  moral  law, 
—  in  which  it  was  never  intended  that 
we  should  find  ultimate  rest,  because  it  is 
not  the  end  of  our  being,  the  fulfilment 
and  satisfaction  of  our  spiritual  nature, 
the  rock  on  which  we  can  finally  repose. 

The  mistake  we  make  lies  in  pinning 
our  faith  to  any  law,  even  the  most  sub- 


THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  145 

lime.  The  Lcaw  has  been  our  strength, 
—  it  Ims  also  been  our  stumbling- 
block,  our  fetich  and  graven  image  at 
times.  In  it  we  have  put  all  our  trust. 
"It  is  not  God's  truth,  it  is  not  God's 
law,  —  it  is  God  that  is  the  salvation 
of  the  world."  The  moral  law  may 
be  a  more  spiritual  rendering  than  the 
ceremonial  of  our  relation  to  God ;  but  it 
does  not  give  us  the  whole  truth  of  that 
relation,  the  last  word  of  holiness,  which 
means  oneness  with  the  Divine,  any  more 
than  it  gives  us  the  whole  content  of 
our  human  relations.  The  moral  law 
does  not  of  necessity  lead  us  to  God, 
although  it  may  lead  us  to  the  heights 
of  human  and  heroic  endeavour  :  whether 
it  also  lead  us  "  beyond,"  into  conscious 
relation  with  something  or  some  one  that 
is  above  and  beyond  the  human,  is  largely 
a  matter  of  our  own  special  needs  and 
temperament. 

10 


146  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

The  essence  of  a  faith^  then,  lies  not 
alone  in  its  moral  efficacy,  but  in  the 
spirit  and  freedom  of  its  obedience,  and 
its  free  access  to  God ;  in  the  instant 
recognition  of  a  divine  impulse,  a  divine 
Presence  in  the  soul,  which  the  moral 
law  does  not  necessarily  evoke,  but  from 
which  the  moral  law  necessarily  flows  as 
a  loving  trust  and  obedience.  "  Climb 
the  moral  heights  within,"  you  say,  -'rise 
to  the  moral  truth,  and  thou  too  shalt 
receive  from  God  the  tablets  of  His  law." 
Nay,  but  rather  let  it  be  "  according  to 
your  faith,"  —  that  is,  according  to  your 
inward  vision,  your  sense  of  this  Pres- 
ence, your  power  to  discern  the  hidden 
truth,  the  deepest  meaning  of  life,  the 
eternal  reality  beneath  the  appearance, 
which  we  call  God ;  above  all,  according 
to  your  power  to  trust  this  vision  of  God 
in  your  life,  and  in  all  life,  through  what- 
ever cloud,  whatever  hindrance  of  tem- 


THE    TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  147 

perament  or  circumstance,  will  be  the 
measure  of  your  strength  to  rise  and  reach 
those  shining  heights. 

Religion  does  not  begin  and  end  with 
the  moral  law,  but  includes  it  in  its  larger, 
deeper  scope.  "  Though  I  were  perfect, 
yet  would  I  not  know  my  own  soul,"  says 
Job.  Religion,  in  its  fullest  sense  — 
namely,  service,  loving  service  to  God 
and  man  —  is  not  satisfied  with  justice 
and  with  duty,  grand  and  commanding 
though  these  ideals  may  be.  "  There  is 
a  word  over  all,  beautiful  as  the  sky,"  fall- 
ing like  the  rain  and  the  sunshine  on  the 
just  and  the  unjust.  We  may  climb  the 
moral  heights  perforce,  we  may  tread 
the  lofty  summits  of  duty  ;  "  we  may  do 
justice  and  love  mercy  : "  "  we  may  be- 
stow our  goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and  give 
our  body  to  be  burned,  —  but  if  we  have 
not  charity  [a  love  and  insight  rather 
divine  than  human]  it  profiteth  nothing." 


148  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

^'But  society  cannot  be  founded  on 
love/'  says  the  exponent  of  Judaism, 
who  insists  "  that  it  is  just  here  where 
Christianity  errs,  and  proves  itself  so 
inferior  to  Judaism,  so  inadequate  in  its 
conception  and  scheme  of  life,  —  a  re- 
ligion for  children  and  undeveloped  na- 
tions, not  for  mature  and  thinking  men." 
"Justice,"  he  tells  us,  "is  definite,  and 
love  indefinite.  Justice  each  can  claim 
from  each  and  all ;  love  none  can  claim 
from  any.  That  which  justice  bids  be 
done  is  predicable  and  verifiable  as  a 
mathematical  problem  ;  justice  is  indeed 
a  form  of  applied  mathematics.  That 
which  love  bids  be  done  is  not  predicable 
and  is  not  verifiable,  it  is  always  an  un- 
known quantity.  It  is  quite  obvious, 
therefore,  that  justice  can  and  that  love 
cannot  furnish  a  basis  for  legislation,  for 
the  regulation  of  human  affairs." 

Apart  from  the  astounding  claim  that 


THE    TASK    OF  JUDAISM.  1^9 

justice  is  or  could  ever  be  made  an  exact 
science,   "a  form   of  applied   mathema- 
tics," —  could     ever    be    so    accurately 
weighed   and   measured    in    the   human 
understanding  as  to  furnish  an  infallible 
basis,  an  infallible  standard   and   guide 
for  human  affairs,  — how  is  it  possible  to 
conceive   of  a  living,  breathing   human 
society,  a  group  of  erring,  aspiring  human 
beings,    as   a   mathematical   problem,   a 
group  of   mathematical   units  requiring 
mathematical  test  and  treatment  ?  If  such 
were  the  perfect  society,  then  better  the 
most  imperfect  that  has  yet  been  evolved. 
But  without    stopping  to   consider   so 
extraordinary  a  statement,  I  would  only 
call  to    mind  a  simple   fact.     The  root 
of  society  is  the  family.     Is  the  family 
founded  on   justice,  —  or,   in   this   case, 
does  not  justice  freely  flow  from  love  ? 
And  is  the  family  therefore  less  stable, 
or  rather  more  so,  than  society,  because 


150  THE    TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

its  basis  is  more  organic,  more  deeply 
rooted  in  the  very  constitution  of  tilings  ? 
The  primitive  man,  the  savage,  recog- 
nises no  tie  beyond  self,  —  no  larger  rela- 
tion, no  love  but  self-love.  Out  of  this 
evolves  family  love,  with  its  sacred  ties, 
its  tender  and  holy  association.  Out  of 
this  evolves  the  State,  with  its  complex 
relations,  its  almost  infinite  promise  and 
scope.  Far,  far  distant  are  we  yet  from 
this  larger  ideal  of  human  progress  and 
growth,  —  of  love,  or  even  of  justice,  in 
this  largest  of  human  relations.  And 
yet  justice  belongs  to  the  more  rudimen- 
tary plane  and  type  of  society.  It  is  the 
preparation  for  love,  —  the  claim  that  can 
be  enforced,  prior  to  the  claim  that  does 
not  need  to  be  enforced.  Justice  is  not 
done  away  with  by  love,  but  is  simply 
deepened  and  enriched,  —  taking  deeper 
root,  lifting  itself  into  higher  and  more 
aspiring  growth. 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  151 

Finally,  in  regard  to  our  relation  with 
a  Supreme   Being,  the  same  critic  tells 
us:    "From  man   to   God  there   can  be 
love,  and  this  love   is  the  very  essence 
of  religion ;  but  from  God  to  man  there 
cannot  be  love,  because  love    expresses 
a  human  emotion,  having  in  it  an  ele- 
ment of  yearning  and  a  desire  for  pos- 
session,—and  to  ascribe  love  to  God  is 
an  anthropopathism,  just  as  the  ascrip- 
tion  to   God   of   hands    or    eyes   is   an 
anthropomorphism."      . 

And  in  the  first  place,  it  seems  to  me 
that  even  in  its  human  aspect  love  has 
something  more  of  the  divine  than  is  here 
attributed  to  it.  But  setting  this  aside, 
if  there  cannot  be  love  from  God  to  man, 
still  less  can  there  be  justice  on  either  side. 
"  How  should  a  man  be  just  with  God  ?  " 
and  "In  God's  sight  can  no  man  living 
be  justified."  Moreover,  a  God  with  a 
conscience,  a  moral  sense,  is  as  "  anthro- 


152  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

popathic"  as  a  God  with  a  heart  or  an 
emotional  sense.  The  moral  is  no  less  a 
purely  human  attribute  and  measurement. 
Whatever  we  know  or  predicate  of  God 
transcends  our  moralities  just  as  much  as 
it  transcends  our  emotions,  —  even  as  the 
heavens  are  high  above  the  earth. 

But  even  that  dread  word,  anthropo- 
morphism, has  lost  some  of  its  terrors 
these  last  few  years.  Even  scientists  are 
beginning  to  acknowledge  that  a  God  of 
humanity  must  have  something  in  com- 
mon with  humanity  ;  otherwise  loe  could 
not  love  Him.  And  this  love  ''  is  the 
very  essence  of  religion,"  you  say.  Surely 
God  were  less,  not  more,  than  human  if 
He  could  not  love  us,  His  children,  whom 
He  has  created  in  His  own  image  and 
likeness,  whom  He  pities  even  as  a  father 
pities  his  children.  And  I  think  we 
should  often  find  in  the  life  and  religious 
experience  of  many  people  that  this  love 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  153 

—  or  rather  the  awakening  into  it,  the 
growing  knowledge  and  consciousness  of 
it  —  had  been  the  very  beginning  of  the 
spiritual  life,  the  leading  out  from  dark- 
ness into  light.  ^^'Say  to  your  friend, 
your  child,  ^God  loves  you;'  say  it  in 
every  language  of  yours,  in  every  ver- 
nacular of  his,  which  you  can  command." 
So  teaches  Phillips  Brooks,  and  I  think 
there  is  inspiration  in  the  words. 

But  these  are  themes  that  do  not  ad- 
mit of  argument  or  proof  on  any  side, 
and  must  rather  come  before  the  judg- 
ment seat  of  each  individual  soul.  Let 
us  return  then  to  the  main  point,  the 
living,  practical  issue.  Our  people  are 
crying  for  bread  and  we  are  giving  them 
a  stone. 

I  wish  to  point  out  the  fact  that  there 
are  two  aspects  of  the  problem  before  us, 
the  crisis  we  have  come  upon,  —  the  one 
in  our  outer,  external  life,  in  our  unsolved 


154  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

and    unsatisfactory   relations    with    the 
people    around    us;    the    other   and    far 
deeper  one,  it  seems  to  nie,  in  ourselves, 
in  our  inner  life,  in   those  deeper  prin- 
ciples and  convictions  in  which  we  had 
thought  ourselves  forever  grounded  and 
fixed.     And  I  cannot   help  feeling  that 
the  solution  of  the  one  depends  primarily 
upon  the  other ;  the  solution  of  both  de- 
pends primarily  upon  ourselves.     From 
within  as  well  as  from  without  we  are 
confronted   with  new  conditions,    grave 
needs    which  we   seem   in   no  wise  pre- 
pared to  meet :  from  within  rather  than 
from  without   must    come  the  answers, 
the  guiding  light  to  a  new  and  larger 
destiny.     Whatever  may  have  been  true 
of  the  past,  the  key  of  the  situation  lies 
now  in  our  hands. 

But  it  cannot  be  by  the  old  methods 
and  formulae,  the  old  stereotyped  answers, 
that  we  can  hope  to  unravel  it.     Both 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  155 

"orthodoxy"  and  ^'reform"  have  alike 
proved  their  inadequacy.  The  new  wine 
cannot  be  put  into  old  bottles,  else  the 
bottles  break.  Still  more  foolhardy  and 
presumptuous  were  it,  however,  to  at- 
tempt to  give  a  panacea  for  all  the  ills 
our  people  are  heir  to ;  to  find  an  instant 
and  definite  solution,  a  complete  settle- 
ment, of  all  our  doubts  and  difficulties 
that  should  at  once  cover  all  the  facts 
and  appeal  to  all  intelligences.  There 
can  only  be  gradual  growth  and  emanci- 
pation according  to  our  lights,  our  oppor- 
tunities, and  understanding;  gradual 
adjustment  and  adaptation  to  our  new 
environment,  whether  temporal  or  spir- 
itual,—  a  long,  difficult,  and  laborious 
process.  But  it  must  be  a  growth  from 
within  of  greater  freedom  and  light,  not 
a  gift  from  without. 

And  if  ever  in  the  distant  future  we 
can  hope  to  see  the  so-called  Jewish  ques- 


156  THE    TASK    OF  JUDAISM. 

tion  settled,  it  is  we  ourselves,  and  not 
the  people  around  us,  who  must  settle  it. 
It  is  we  ourselves  who  must  lay  it  at  rest 
by  living  in  larger  questions  than  those 
of  race  or  sect  or  narrow  creed,  in  larger 
rehgious  sympathies  and  toleration,  in  the 
larger  sjnrit  of  our  faith  in  a  universal 
Father,  rather  than  in  the  restrictions 
and  bondage  of  the  letter  that  would  con- 
fine it  exclusively  to  our  peculiar  Jewish 
dispensation.  In  a  word,  it  must  be  a 
change  of  heart  and  spirit,  of  inner  mo- 
tive and  attitude,  rather  than  of  circum- 
stance. Circumstances  have  changed  and 
are  changing  all  the  time  around  us,  and 
yet,  in  a  sense,  we  diO  not  change.  The 
Jew  remains  the  Jew,  separated  by  alien 
traditions,  by  almost  invincible  antago- 
nisms, from  the  people  with  whom  he 
dwells  in  close  daily  living  and  contact. 
However  much,  however  little  we  base  it 
on,  whether  as  race  or  religion,  the  primal 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  157 

fact  with  US  remains  our  Judaism,  our 
survival  as  Jews,  distinct  from  the  people 
around  us,  —  a  survival,  a  distinction 
always  to  be  insisted  upon,  not  as  a 
large,  all-embracing  spiritual  idea  and 
fellowship  that  welcomes  other  expres- 
sion of  the  truth  besides  its  own,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  as  a  principle  that  under 
some  form,  some  pretext  or  another, 
always   isolates  and  excludes. 

It  were  idle  to  attribute  solely  to 
others,  and  therefore  to  resent  with  such 
bitter  heart-burning,  that  very  aloofness 
which  is  the  basis  of  our  own  existence. 
It  is  we  who  draw  the  lines  and  make 
the  terms  and  conditions,  who  call  out 
to  the  people  around  us  :  "  Thus  far  and 
no  farther  !  We  will  buy  with  you,  we 
will  sell  with  you,  we  will  give  and  take ; 
but  bone  of  our  bone,  flesh  of  our  flesh, 
spirit  of  our  spirit,  shall  you  not  be. 
For  we  are  a  holy  and  consecrated  race. 


158  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

unto  whom,  and  unto  whom  alone,  God's 
truth  has  been  conveyed  m  order  that 
we  may  hand  it  down  intact  to  our  chil- 
dren and  our  children's  children  after 
them." 

A  logical  position,  if  you  will;  but 
then  we  must  abide  by  it,  and  be  will- 
ing to  take  the  consequences.  We  must 
be  content  with  our  isolation  and  exclu- 
sion, our  little  corner  of  Palestine,  our 
Jerusalem  old  or  new,  the  Ghettos  of  our 
own  making.  We  must  remain  Hebrews 
among  Hebrews,  a  peculiar  race,  a  pe- 
culiar sect,  whose  very  existence  betokens 
separation,  whose  only  claim  can  be  for 
recognition  as  such  a  sect  and  race,  — 
for  toleration,  not  for  perfectly  free  and 
equal  acceptance  by  people  of  alien  birth 
and  belief.  Presupposhig  narrowness, 
we  naturally  find  narrowness  ;  we  invite 
it  and  we  meet  it  again  and  again,  gener- 
ally of  a  more  malignant  type  than  our 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  159 

own,  in  others  more  ignorant  than  our- 
selves, or  more  endowed  with  social  and 
worldly  advantage.  But  we  can  hardly 
expect  that  even  the  most  well-disposed 
of  those  outside  our  faith  should  not 
make  their  own  reservations  and  exclu- 
sions, and  draw  their  own  conclusions. 
We  can  hardly  expect  that  they  should 
regard  as  universal  a  religion  that  re- 
quires so  many  safeguards  and  precau- 
tions in  order  to  secure  its  continuance, 
or  that  the  world  should  be  edified  by 
ideals  that  necessarily  move  in  so  small 
a  compass. 

"  Not  ours  the  fault ! ''  you  exclaim. 
"  The  Jew  is  ready.  The  Jew  hopes  and 
prays  for  the  time  when  his  religion  as 
distinguished  from  others  shall  no  longer 
be.  The  Jew  is  ready,  and  has  been  for 
some  time,  to  plunge  into  the  ocean  of  hu- 
manity. But  the  world  is  not  ready  ;  the 
time  is  not  ripe.     The  ocean  of  humanity 


160  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

does  not  as  yet  invite  us  to  its  invigorat- 
ing waves.  The  poisoned  arrows  of  hate 
are  still  abroad,  still  seeking  the  Jew  as 
a  target.  The  fault  is  not  ours.  The 
Jew  cannot  say  when  the  time  shall  be 
for  him  to  disappear.  The  world  at  large 
has  to  fix  the  hour." 

And  it  is  just  exactly  here  where  you 
are  wrong.  It  is  for  the  Jew  to  sound 
the  note  of  his  own  freedom,  when  he  is 
ready  for  it,  to  claim  it,  rather  than  wait 
for  the  world  to  fix  the  hour,  for  the 
world  to  give  it  to  him.  It  is  for  the  Jew 
himself  to  throw  off  the  chains  that  bind 
him,  whether  of  his  own  or  the  world's 
making ;  to  break  down  the  barriers,  the 
walls  of  defiance  or  defence,  behind  which 
he  has  so  long  been  forced  to  shelter  him- 
self;  and  to  stand  free  among  free  men, 
''  with  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  sons  of 
God,  of  those  who  are  led  by  the  spirit  of 
God,  and  for  whom  the  whole  creation 


THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  161 

waits."  If  the  Jew  is  ready  for  this  and 
does  not  do  it,  then  his  own  words  con- 
demn him.  The  world  cannot  hinder, 
the  world  cannot  bring  it  about.  And,  in 
the  face  of  anti-Semitism,  I  believe  that 
the  world  will  recognise  it  when  the  Jew 
actually  is  free.  Anti-Semitism  cannot 
make,  cannot  keep  us  Jews,  any  more  than 
it  can  make  Christians  of  us,  if  we  have  no 
better  reason  for  being  either  the  one  or  the 
other.  That  were  a  low  view  of  Judaism. 
Like  a  dark  cloud  upon  the  horizon,  anti- 
Semitism  still  lingers  in  lands  where 
darkness  lingers.  In  America,  in  such 
shadowy  form  as  it  appears,  it  disappears 
again  like  a  cloud  when  we  ignore  it, 
when  we  have  learned  to  live  far  and 
away  above  and  beyond  it,  in  the  peace 
and  freedom  of  large  and  liberated  ideas. 
We  bear  a  charmed  life ;  the  slings  and 
arrows  of  hate  pass  us  by  unharmed, 
because  they  no  longer  touch  us.  We 
11 


162  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

are  not  traitors,  we  are  not  cowards 
who  desert  our  less  fortunate  brethren, 
the  oppressed  and  persecuted  of  our  race. 
On  the  contrary,  "  if  we  would  lift 
them,  we  must  stand  on  higher  ground 
than  they,"  and  the  best  and  most  loyal 
service  we  can  do  them,  is  to  lead  them 
gently  but  firmly  where  they  too  may  be 
finally  beyond  the  range  of  persecution 
and  hate.  Here  in  America  we  stand  on 
such  a  vantage  ground,  we  survey  so  wide 
a  field,  —  the  whole  stretch  of  our  civili- 
sation as  it  were,  conditions  so  various, 
opportunities  so  vast,  —  that  here  if  any- 
where the  problem  must  resolve  itself.  By 
almost  imperceptible  and  insensible  grada- 
tions, the  East  seems  to  merge  and  be 
lost  in  the  West,  the  old  seems  to  melt 
in  the  new,  and  Israel  to  disappear  in  the 
vast  ocean  of  humanity. 

Like  the  gathering  of  the  waters  they 
come  on  every  side,  —  from  the  dark  ages 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  1G3 

one  might  almost  say,  the  benighted  hinds 
where  no  ray  of  freedom  has  ever  reached. 
We  do  not  say  to  these  bewildered  and 
belated  wanderers  from  other  climes  and 
times  :  "  Keep  your  jargon  and  your  un- 
couth ways  and  customs.  Insist  upon 
being  Russians,  Poles,  Roumanians,  for 
on  no  account  must  you  lose  your  nation- 
ality and  identity."  On  the  contrary,  we 
bid  them  welcome  only  on  condition  that 
they  shall  lose  it,  that  they  shall  become 
Americans  as  we  are  ;  we  teach  them  what 
it  means  to  be  free,  and  in  a  generation 
their  children  are  free-born  Americans. 
And  so  too  with  our  Jewish  nationality. 
We  cannot  expect  to  become  citizens  of 
the  world  while  we  remain  citizens  of 
Judaea,  bound  by  local  ties,  local  preju- 
dice and  interests ;  so  long  as  we  insist 
upon  perpetuating  a  race-tie  that  sepa- 
rates us  from  the  people  around  us. 
But  there  is  still  a  deeper  question  in- 


164  THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

volved,  which  in  reality  includes  the 
other  two.  Politically,  socially,  we  may 
be  free,  or  we  may  become  so  in  time 
through  the  gradual  process  of  emancipa- 
tion and  amalgamation,  conditioned  to  a 
certain  degree,  upon  the  political  and  so- 
cial status  of  the  nation  among  whom  we 
happen  to  dwell.  But  there  is  another 
freedom  into  which  we  can  only  enter 
through  our  own  initiative,  our  own  effort 
or  aspiration,  and  at  such  time  and  in 
such  degree  as  we  may  be  ready  for  it. 
Few  of  us  may  suspect,  perhaps,  and  still 
fewer  be  willing  to  acknowledge,  the  lack 
among  us  of  spiritual  and  religious  free- 
dom, —  of  that  freedom  of  the  soul,  of 
the  spirit  "  which  bloweth  where  it  list- 
eth,"  and  which  leaves  us  free  to  go  forth 
beyond  our  own  borders,  to  seek,  to  find, 
to  share  the  spiritual  life,  wherever  and 
however  it  may  meet  us. 

Pent  up  so  long  in  our  Jewries,  we  do 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  1G5 

not  realise  how  exclusive,  how  concen- 
trated, how  intensely  Jewish  our  thought, 
our  whole  point  of  view  has  become. 
Whoever  has  transcended  it  has  of  ne- 
cessity been  ostracised.  Witness  Spi- 
noza, Maimonides  even,  "  who  is  cursed 
as  a  heretic  and  perverter  of  the  Law." 
We  do  not  realise  how  completely  we  have 
been  shut  out  from  the  larger  spiritual 
life  of  the  world  around  us,  from  all  spiri- 
tual contact  and  intercourse  with  any  but 
our  little  band  of  so-called  co-religionists  ; 
how  limited  in  consequence  are  our  sym- 
pathies in  this  direction,  and  how  ham- 
pered our  judgment.  We  may  know 
somewhat  of  the  history  of  the  Christian 
Church,  its  errors,  its  follies,  and  its 
crimes,  especially  in  dealing  with  our- 
selves ;  we  may  know  somewhat  of  Chris- 
tian Doctrine,  the  teachings  and  opinions 
of  men  ;  but  of  that  inner  life  of  the  world 
whose  course  and  whose  shaping  are  due 


166  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

to  Christian  thought  and  influence,  —  that 
is  to  say,  to  the  life  and  spirit  of  Christ, 
—  we  know  very  little,  nor  are  we  willing 
to  acquiesce  in  what  little  we  do  know. 
We  are  still  largely  under  the  impression 
that  religiously,  as  compared  with  our- 
selves, the  nations  around  us  are  sunk  in 
darkness. 

However  liberal-minded  we  may  hold 
ourselves  to  be,  however  emancipated, 
however  indifferent  to  the  forms  of  our 
own  faith,  our  glory  and  our  pride  still 
lie  in  the  fact  that  we  are  not  Chris- 
tians, but  outside  of  the  pale  as  much  as 
ever,  and  as  firmly  persuaded  that  no 
good  can  come  out  of  Nazareth.  In  our 
heart  of  hearts  we  know  very  well  that 
not  for  an  instant  do  we  tolerate  Chris- 
tianity, or  look  upon  it  other  than  as  an 
aberration,  a  perversion  of  Judaism,  "  a 
degrading  form  of  error,"  of  superstition, 
of  idolatry  and  man-worship.     The  very 


THE    TASK    OF  JUDAISM.  167 

name  of  Christ  is  a  sacrilege  in  our  eyes,  a 
standing  menace  and  reproach,  a  viola- 
tion of  our  sacred  principle  of  monothe- 
ism, at  which  our  Jewish  sensibilities 
spring  to  arms  or  shrink  within  them- 
selves, chilled  and  repelled.  But  why 
should  we,  and  we  alone,  be  conscious  of 
this  moral  shock,  when  even  within  doc- 
trinal limits  we  see  how  wide  a  field,  how 
large  a  latitude,  is  possible,  —  as  evi- 
denced by  the  number  and  diversity  of 
Christian  sects,  ranging  from  High-Church 
Episcopalian  to  Unitarianism ;  above  all, 
when  we  remember  how  commanding  a 
place  this  conception  in  some  form  or 
other,  this  personality,  has  taken  in  the 
civilisation  of  which  we  form  a  part,  in 
tiie  almost  universal  religious  conscious- 
ness of  men  among  whom  we  desire  to 
dwell? 

We  think  others  narrow,  or  less  en- 
lightened  than  ourselves,  who  are    not 


168  THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

willing  or  able  to  receive  our  doctrine, 
our  version  of  the  truth,  our  conception 
of  the  Deity,  our  ideas  of  the  world's 
moral  and  social  regeneration;  and  yet 
whatever  we  may  do  in  secular  matters, 
in  religious  and  spiritual  matters  we  do 
not  allow  a  ray  of  light  to  penetrate 
from  outside.  We  do  not  even  conceive 
or  acknowledge  that  there  can  be  any 
light,  any  vision  but  our  own,  —  so  firmly 
have  we  believed  what  our  fathers  have 
told  us  from  the  beginning ;  so  confident, 
so  secure  are  we  that  the  truth  we  hold 
about  God  is  all  the  truth  that  men 
have  ever  known,  all  that  they  can  ever 
know,  all  they  need  to  know,  and  that 
therefore  our  mission  consists  in  guard- 
ing this  truth  unsullied  from  the  world 
until  the  world  is  worthy  to  receive  it. 

The  question  I  would  ask  now  is :  Are 
we  justified  in  this  belief ;  and  does  the 
spiritual   condition   of   our   people   bear 


THE    TASK    OF  JUDAISM.  169 

witness  to  it,  either  to  the  people  around 
us  or  among  ourselves  ?  Where  are  our 
spiritual  teachers?  What  are  our  con- 
tributions to  the  spiritual  thought  of  the 
Avorld  ?  Open  our  "  religious  "  books, 
our  Jewish  magazines  and  periodicals,  — 
what  shall  we  find  but  arid,  technical, 
legal  discussion  —  exegetical  treatises, 
learned  disquisitions  perhaps,  on  some 
obscure  point  of  law  or  doctrine,  the  root 
of  some  Hebrew  word,  the  source  of  some 
far-away  tradition,  —  purely  sectarian 
questions,  that  could  only  concern  us  as  a 
narrow  local  sect,  and  could  have  no  uni- 
versal significance  or  application,  no  pos- 
sible relation,  to  the  world  at  large, — 
Jewish  topics  for  a  Jewish  audience? 

Is  this  all  that  we  can  lay  claim  to,  all 
that  we  can  aspire  to,  —  we,  who  hold 
God's  truth  in  the  hollow  of  our  hand  ? 
Not  a  breath  of  the  sph^it  anywhere,  not 
a  hint  of  the  spiritual  life  truly  so-called. 


170  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

Cramped  within  our  narrow  borders^  we 
are  stifled  for  lack  of  air  to  breathe,  for 
lack  of  room  to  grow,  for  lack  of  life, 
spiritual  life,  —  the  life  w^hich  is  more 
than  food  or  raiment,  more  than  deeds 
or  creeds,  which  comes  down  to  us  from 
above,  and  is  the  free  gift  of  God  to 
those  who  are  free  to  receive  and  there- 
fore free  to  give. 

It  is  not  enough,  as  we  have  seen,  to 
lop  off  excrescences,  to  rub  away  the 
dust  and  mould  of  centuries,  the  Ghetto 
accumulation  of  effete  rites  and  customs, 
so  long  as  our  spirit  is  not  free  to  rise 
above  Jewish  horizons  and  boundary  lines, 
to  see  that  in  God's  boundless  universe 
all  truth,  all  spirit  are  one,  alike  for  the 
Jew  and  the  Christian  who  live  in  the 
spirit  and  the  truth.  It  is  not  enough  to 
humanise,  to  liberalise,  to  "  moralise,"  or 
secularise  our  religion.  What  we  need  is 
to  spiritualise  it  by  making  our  relation 


THE    TASK   OF  JUJ)A1SM.  171 

with  God,  and  thence  our  relation  with 
men,  a  more  vital  and  therefore  a  more 
spiritual  one  than  can  be  based  on  law  in 
any  form.  Law  is  of  the  natural  order, 
and  love  is  of  the  spiritual  order ;  hence 
law  can  never  be  the  fundamental  rela- 
tion which  binds  us  to  one  another  as 
spiritual  beings,  and  to  God  as  spirit. 
Law  can  only  be  the  tutelage  through 
which  we  must  pass  to  higher  freedom,  — 
that  freedom  of  the  spirit  which  is  life, 
spiritual  life,  because  it  lives  in  the  spirit, 
not  the  letter  of  man's  obedience,  in  the 
motive  rather  than  the  deed,  and  which 
is  therefore  love  in  the  highest,  —  "  the 
unknown  quantity,"  if  you  will,  because  it 
puts  that  touch  of  the  Lifinite  into  life 
and  gives  the  heaiity  of  holiness,  "the 
light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land,"  and 
yet  "  the  master-light  of  all  our  seeing ;  " 
which  cannot  be  predicated,  which  can- 
not be  verified,  because  it  transcends  hu- 


172  THE    TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

man  logic  and  proof;  which  cannot  be 
bound,  which  cannot  be  claimed  nor  con- 
ditioned, but  must  always  remain  a  free 
gift,  freely  given  and  freely  received,  — 
the  perfect  love  which  casts  out  fear, 
"  the  peace  which  passes  understanding." 

Is  this  Christianity  ?  Is  it  Judaism  ? 
What  does  it  matter?  Side  by  side, 
shoulder  to  shoulder,  stand  the  Christian 
and  the  Jew,  their  task  precisely  the  same, 
their  destiny  strangely  bound  together ; 
no  longer  separated  even  by  arbitrary 
and  external  distinctions,  still  less  by  any 
real  distinction,  and  yet  divided  as  ever  in 
heart  and  spirit  and  allegiance,  unable 
or  unwilling  to  recognise  each  other  as 
brothers  in  the  deepest  sense,  children  of 
the  same  spiritual  Father,  heirs  of  the 
true  faith  which  by  its  largeness,  its 
power  to  satisfy  the  deepest  spiritual 
needs  of  men,  shall  overcome  the  world. 

One  of  the  most  spiritually-minded  of 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  173 

our  New  England  women,  whose  life  and 
letters  have  just  been  published,  writes 
thus  to  a  Jew  :  "  I  have  always  had  the 
idea  that  Jew  and  Christian  were  really 
one ;  only  they  did  not  understand  each 
other."  And,  again,  Claude  Montefiore 
in  a  recent  article  says :  "  The  doctrine 
of  Jesus  may  be  regarded  as  pure  Chris- 
tianity or  pure  Judaism.  Either  way 
contains  a  truth."  Whence  comes,  then, 
this  tragic  misunderstanding,  this  gulf  of 
separation  that  the  ages  have  not  been 
able  to  bridge  over? 

"  I  come  not  to  send  peace  on  earth, 
but  a  sword."  The  words  ring  down 
through  the  centuries.  It  is  Christ  the 
Jew,  Christ  the  Christian,  who  has  set 
at  variance  the  Christian  with  the  Jew, 
"  the  parent  with  the  child,  the  brother 
with  the  brother."  Nor  will  the  sword 
be  laid  aside  until  Christian  and  Jew 
alike,  until  all  mankind,  come  to  a  better 


174  THE    TASK    OF  JUDAISM. 

understanding  of  the  truth  of  love  he 
taught;  the  life  of  love  he  lived,  the  way 
of  love  he  showed,  by  which  all  men, 
without  respect  of  persons  or  condition 
—  not  alone  the  prophet  and  the  saint, 
the  holy  men  of  Israel,  the  elect  of  the 
world,  but  the  sinner  and  the  outcast 
and  the  lost  sheep,  the  least  of  His  little 
ones  —  should  come  nigh  the  Father. 

"Ah,  but,"  you  exclaim,  "for  well- 
nigh  two  thousand  years  this  religion  of 
love  has  been  taught,  has  been  preached 
from  how  many  pulpits,  in  how  many 
lands,  and  what  has  come  of  it  ?  Cor- 
ruption in  high  places  and  in  low;  a 
society  built  on  selfishness,  whose  very 
pillars  are  greed ;  a  ruinous  competition 
which  drives  the  weak  ones  to  the  wall, 
and  poverty  stalking  grim  and  gaunt 
among  us,  unloving  and  unloved.  Church 
after  church  rears  its  heaven-pointed 
spire,  its  golden  cross,  aloft  among  the 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  175 

dwellings  of  the  rich,  while  the  poor  live 
huddled  together  in  wretched  tenements 
not  fit  for  dumb  beasts  of  burden.  Here 
in  our  own  city  a  leading  church  has 
just  openly  avowed  itself  a  *' moneyed 
corporation '  whose  first  interest  was 
'business'  interest,  pledged  to  secure 
the  greatest  amount  of  revenue  possible 
for  the  building  of  its  churches  and  the 
spread  of  its  faith.  Said  a  labour  leader 
who  recently  visited  New  York,  '  You 
have  too  many  churches  here,'  for  it  is 
churches  such  as  these  that  widen  the 
breach  between  the  rich  and  the  poor, 
that  make  the  ir religion,  not  the  religion 
of  the  masses.  If  this  be  the  religion  of 
love,  we  will  have  none  of  it.  Let  the 
Christian  better  live  up  to  his  ideal ; 
let  him  give  the  example,  and  perhaps 
we  will  follow;  let  him  prove  by  his 
deeds  of  charity  and  love  the  superiority 
of  his  faith  over  ours,  and  then,  mayhap, 


176  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

we  will  be  convinced,  —  or  rather,  no, 
we  shall  not  need  to  be  convinced,  for 
his  faith  will  then  be  as  ours.  When 
men  have  ceased  to  persecute  and  hate, 
then  justice  will  be  established  upon  the 
earth,  and  all  men  will  be  brothers." 

But,  no,  I  say  unto  you,  not  so.  It 
is  we  who  may  give  the  example ;  we 
who  may  lead,  not  wait  to  follow.  It  is 
we  who  may  teach  the  religion  of  love 
as  it  has  never  yet  been  taught,  who 
may  practise  and  spread  it,  —  we  who 
have  proved  ourselves  capable  of  living 
and  of  dying  for  an  ideal.  Here  is  our 
great  mission,  our  opportunity  as  a  spiri- 
tual people  scattered  among  the  nations, 
in  whose  breast  smoulders  the  sacred 
fire,  in  whose  veins  courses  the  blood  of 
prophet  and  of  priest.  Shall  we  be 
content  with  petty  points  of  law,  with 
paltry  measuring  of  anise  and  cummin, 
and,   gathering   our    skirts    of    holiness 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  Ill 

about  us,  go  our  way  undefiled,  in  con- 
scious pride  of  rectitude  ?  Has  God  no 
larger  purpose,  no  higher  destiny  in  store 
for  us,  His  chosen  people  whom  He  has 
so  miraculously  preserved,  whom  He  has 
led  through  the  wilderness  into  the 
'promised  land,  out  of  captivity  into 
freedom  ?  No  longer  let  it  be,  to  the 
nations  around  us  :  "  Stand  back,  for  ye 
are  less  holy  than  we  are,"  but  rather 
once  again  as  before,  from  one  of  our 
race :  "  Come  unto  me,  for  I  am  meek 
and  lowly  of  heart.  Come  learn  of  me, 
for  I  will  teach  you  to  know  God,  —  not 
in  pillar  of  cloud  and  fire,  in  awful  might 
and  majesty,  but  in  gentle  ministry  of 
love,  as  from  father  to  son,  from  parent 
to  little  child,  from  loving  friend  to  friend. 
I  will  make  incarnate  in  myself  this 
power  and  will  to  love,  and  thus  reveal 
the  Father  to  His  children  in  loving 
unity  of  spirit  and  likeness,  —  the  human 
12 


178  THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM, 

even  as  one  with  the  divine.  And  for 
this  I  offer  myself  —  in  sacrifice  ?  No  ; 
but  rather  in  consummation,  in  conse- 
cration, of  the  whole  life,  the  whole 
being,  to  do  the  Father's  will  and  so 
make  known  His  doctrine." 

^^The  world  is  not  ready,"  you  say? 
In  a  sense,  the  world  is  never  ready ;  and 
yet  the  truth  comes  to  be  known,  the 
truth  must  be  taught,  though  its  teachers 
die  in  the  teaching.  But  I  believe  that 
the  world  is  waiting  even  now  for  this 
truth  to  be  put  into  life,  for  this  heavenly 
message  of  love,  for  the  messenger  that 
comes  in  the  name  of  the  Lord,  that  brings 
good  tidings  of  good,  that  publisheth 
peace  and  salvation,  —  peace  on  earth 
to  all  men  of  God's  will.  For  the  world 
has  awakened  to  its  needs.  The  thousand 
schemes  for  social  reform  prove  that  many 
a  man  is  ready  and  willing  to  sell  all  he 
has  and  give  to  the  poor,  if  only  he  knew 


THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  179 

how  best  to  help  his  neighbour.  But  the 
Church  is  not  ready ;  the  Church  is  not 
willing  to  give  up  anything  to  which  it 
clings,  of  the  goods  of  this  world  or  an- 
other, its  temporal  or  its  spiritual  power, 
—  and  so  the  Church  has  lost  its  influ- 
ence, for  men  see  the  hollowness  of  its 
claim.  The  world  is  no  longer  deceived 
by  false  gods  and  false  doctrines,  by  a 
false  worship  of  Mammon  that  calls  it- 
self Christianity.  Nor  yet  will  it  turn 
to  a  Judaism  stamped  with  narrowness. 
Not  even  the  Judaism  which  the  Prophets 
preached,  but  that  which  they  prophesied, 
when  "  sorrow  and  sighing  sliall  flee 
away,"  and  "the  earth  shall  be  filled 
with  the  knowledge  of  the  Lord  as  the 
waters  cover  the  sea,"  is  that  which  shall 
unite  the  Jewish  and  the  Christian  ideal ; 
and  what  God  has  thus  joined  together 
in  deepest  spiritual  union,  let  no  man 
keep  asunder. 


180  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

But,  practically,  what  shall  we  do? 
I  am  asked  indignantly :  "  Shall  we 
abandon  Judaism  ?  If  so,  what  are  we 
to  substitute  for  it  ?  Shall  we  join  the 
ranks  of  the  atheists,  or  seek  refuge  in 
the  dominant  Church?  There  is  no 
other  alternative.  And,  if  not,  then 
where  shall  we  find  our  fellowship  under 
existing  conditions  ?  ...  To  give  up  Ju- 
daism now,  to  merge  with  the  world  at 
large  spiritually  at  this  time  would  be 
an  act  of  wanton  self-destruction,  a  sacri- 
rifice  great  and  heavy,  unnecessarily 
brought  and  unable  to  secure  the  result 
expected,  —  would  be  like  leaping  into 
deep  water,  unable  to  swim,  and  without 
cause  courting  destruction  and  death." 

"  Shall  we  abandon  Judaism  ?  "  When 
you  ask  this  question,  you  seem  to  forget 
how  many  of  us  have  virtually  aban- 
doned it  in  any  sense  that  could  be  called 
a  religion.     To  how  many  has  it  become 


THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  181 

little  more  than  a  form  or  a  name,  a 
reminiscence,  a  sentiment  and  associa- 
tion, a  custom  which  we  cherish  because 
our  fathers  cherished  it  before  us ;  a  sort 
of  ancestor-worship  which  we  accept  or 
reject  because  we  are  too  lazy  or  too  in- 
different to  examine  for  ourselves  and 
see  whether  religion  could  be  anything 
more  or  anything  different,  —  so  that  it 
ceases  to  be  a  matter  of  much  conse- 
quence to  ourselves,  and  still  less  to  the 
world  at  large,  whether  such  a  Judaism 
be  abandoned  or  not.  It  is  true  we  have 
not  joined  the  dominant  Church  ;  but,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  ranks  of  the  atheists, 
and,  above  all,  of  agnosticism,  have  been 
largely  recruited  from  among  us.  On 
the  other  hand,  Judaism  is  too  grand 
and  too  sacred  a  heritage,  and  becomes 
of  too  vital  an  import  when  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  how  w^e  shall  transmit  it  to  our 
children,  to  be  allowed  thus  to  go  by  de- 


182  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

fault,  to  drift  aimlessly  into  the  shallows 
of  indifferentism  and  unbelief,  instead 
of  deepening  and  broadening  with  the 
world's  deeper  spiritual  currents,  enrich- 
ing and  at  the  same  time  enriched 
thereby.  Shall  we  be  afraid  of  deep 
waters,  —  we,  God's  chosen  ones,  for 
whom  the  seas  have  divided,  over  whom 
again  and  again  the  waves  and  the  bil- 
lows have  passed  ?  It  is  no  sacrifice,  no 
surrender  we  are  called  upon  to  make, 
but  a  coming  to  our  own,  a  claiming  of 
the  kingdom  which  is  ours  for  the  tak- 
ing, for  the  asking,  for  the  seeking, 
where  none  is  first,  none  last,  but  all 
are  one  in  equal  love  and  kinship, — a 
spiritual  kingdom  which  is  no  far-away 
dream  of  the  skies,  no  far-away  dream 
of  the  earth,  but  here  and  now,  in  the 
heart  and  soul  and  mind  of  man  ;  the 
kingdom  that  is  within  us,  every  one 
of   us  who    has   the   courage    and  faith 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  183 

to  rise  cabove  our  material  surroundings 
and  conditions,  the  world  of  time  and 
space,  beyond  the  things  of  sense,  the 
things  of  earth,  where  heaven  comes 
in  sight.  "As  dying,  and  behold  we 
live;  as  having  nothing,  and  yet  pos- 
sessing all  things." 

But  I  must  frankly  confess  that  I  have 
no  ready-made  creed,  no  ready-made 
church,  no  cut-and-dried  formula  of 
practice  and  belief  to  offer.  The  Chris- 
tian Church,  the  Christian  doctrine,  holds 
no  more  for  us  than  Judaism.  The  best 
Christianity  of  to-day  is,  for  the  most 
part,  outside  the  churches  and  entirely 
outside  of  doctrine.  Christianity  is  not, 
as  we  falsely  suppose,  a  doctrine,  —  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  the  Vicarious 
Sacrifice  and  Atonement,  —  although  it 
is  usually  represented  to  us  as  such. 
Like  Judaism,  it  is  a  life  consecrated 
to  God  through  loving  service  to  man. 


184  THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 

Where  two  or  three  are  gathered  together 
in  the  name  of  this  God  who  is  Spirit,  — 
and  who   must  be  worshipped  in  spirit 
and  in  truth,  not  in  form,  in  the  graven 
image  of  the  letter;  not  in  outward  ser- 
vice, but  in  the  inner  life  of  holiness  and 
peace,  — shall   we    find  our  fellowship, 
whether  we  be  Jews  or  Gentiles.     And 
it  is  this  fellowship  that  we  must  claim 
if  we  would  have  any  part  in  building 
up  the  religion  of  the  future,  the  ^^relig"^ 
ion  of  humanity,"  as  it  is  called.     Wh^t 
this  religion  may  be,  who  can  tell,  who 
can  foresee  ?     AVith  what  forms  it  may  be 
clothed,  with  what   rites   and  symbols, 
what  of  old  truth  or  of  new  it  may  em- 
body, we  cannot  know.     But  of  one  thing 
we  may  be  certain  :  there  can  be  no  true 
religion,  there  can  be  no   true  humanity, 
without  this  basis  of  fellowship.     For  the 
rest  we  must  be  content  to  wait,  to  trust, 
to  hope,  with  so  vast  a  hope  before  us. 


THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  185 

SO  great  a  goal  to  be  attained,  so  sure  a 
light  upon  our  path.  And  living  thus  in 
larger  ideals,  I  cannot  help  believing  that 
our  lesser  ills  will  fall  away,  our  outer 
relations  will  adjust  themselves  in  propor- 
tion as  we  come  to  a  clearer  understand- 
ing of  ourselves.  For  each  one  of  us 
the  problem  is  an  individual  one,  both  as 
regards  our  outward  circumstance  and 
our  inner  convictions  and  experience ; 
but  according  as  we  best  solve  it  unto 
ourselves,  so  shall  we  best  solve  it  unto 
others. 

Rooted  deep  in  our  Judaism  is  a  great 
moral  force  to  sway  the  world,  —  the 
power  which  makes  for  righteousness, 
the  Law  which  is  like  a  seed  buried  in 
the  dark  earth.  But  the  seed  is  not 
quickened  except  it  die.  Oh,  for  the 
quickening  touch,  the  breath  of  the  spirit 
that  shall  kindle  with  new  life  —  God's 
life  — this  fiery  seed,  this  immortal  spark 


186  THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

of  the  soul,  the  knowledge  of  good  and 
evil,  the  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteous- 
ness !  Like  the  strong  and  mighty  wind 
that  sweeps  over  the  earth,  driving  dead 
things  before  it ;  like  the  sudden  sunshine 
that  bursts  the  clouds  and  floods  the  air, 
scattering  radiance  so  that  the  depths  are 
kindled,  the  heights  shine,  the  mighty  sea 
laughs  and  leaps  like  a  child  at  play,  and 
each  tiny  bird- throat  swells  with  its  note 
of  praise  and  rapture,  each  tender  flower- 
bell  rings  out  its  fragrant  carol  for  life, 
dear  life.  The  whole  world  is  alive  and 
aflame  with  a  light  and  glory  not  its  own. 
All  creation  is  a  prean,  a  song  of  life  tri- 
umphant, life  universal,  because  "  God 
is  in  His  heavens,  God  is  in  His  world." 
Ah,  so  shall  the  heart  of  man  rejoice 
when  God  has  entered  to  fill  and  bless 
it  with  His  holy  presence  !  "  Eye  hath 
not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither  have 
entered  into  the  heart  of  man,  the  things 


THE    TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  187 

which  God  hath  prepared  for  them  that 
love  Him."  More  tender  than  tenderest 
flower  of  earth  is  the  flower  of  heaven,  — 
love ;  more  radiant  than  the  sunlight, 
mightier  than  the  mighty  wind  or  the 
sea,  is  the  great  heart  of  man  fashioned 
in  God's  own  image,  to  know  and  be 
known  of  Him,  gifted  with  God's  great 
gift  of  loving,  the  divine  passion  to  know 
and  to  do  His  will.  As  the  tiny  dewdrop 
reflects  the  sun,  so  does  the  heart  of  man 
reflect  the  great  central  sun,  the  glowing 
soul  of  the  universe,  the  life  and  light  of 
the  world.  Without  this,  all  were  dust 
and  ashes,  crumbling  before  our  eyes, 
vanishing  like  an  insubstantial  dream ; 
our  human  lives  were  transient,  perish- 
able things,  our  joys  a  mockery,  our 
grief,  despair.  '^  The  grass  withereth, 
the  flower  fadeth,  but  the  word  of  God 
(which  is  Love)  endureth  forever." 
"  Whether  there  be  prophecies,  they  shall 


188  THE   TASK   OF  JUDAISM. 

fail :  whether  there  be  tongues,  they  shall 
cease :  whether  there  be  knowledge,  it 
shall  vanish  away.  Charity  never  faileth." 
What  we  need  is  God  in  our  hearts, 
in  our  life,  —  God  with  us  in  our  midst, 
on  our  common  earth,  in  our  poor,  dis- 
tracted human  lives.  ^^For  this  mortal 
must  put  on  immortality,  this  corrupt- 
ible must  put  on  incorruption."  Not 
when  we  put  on  our  grave-clothes  and  go 
down  among  the  dead  where  none  praise 
the  Lord,  but  even  now  while  we  are 
§till  clothed  in  the  flesh,  wrapped  round 
with  human  seeming  and  believing,  must 
the  spirit  be  free  to  burst  its  bonds  and 
return  unto  God  who  gave  it.  When 
the  veil  of  sense,  the  veil  of  self,  is  lifted, 
then  is  the  heart  made  pure  to  see  God ; 
then  only  do  we  enter  the  spiritual  life 
where  the  hidden  things  are  revealed, 
the  secret  things  of  God  made  manifest, 
the  deep,  mysterious  meanings  of  life  un- 


THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM.  189 

rolled.  Sorrow  and  joy  become  as  one 
in  that  beatific  vision,  and  "  heaven  a 
daily  reality  of  earth." 

But  think  not  that  we  inherit  spiritual 
life  because  we  are  born  into  an  inherited 
faith,  an  ancestral  and  traditional  re- 
ligion ;  because  we  preach  a  Unity  or 
Trinity.  Our  life  may  be  just  as  bare 
and  unfruitful,  our  preaching  just  as  un- 
profitable. God  is  not  handed  down  to 
us  in  the  sense  that  we  hold  Him  in 
our  hand  firmly  grasped  and  secure,  ours 
only  and  theirs  who  believe  as  we  do 
about  Him, —  in  the  sense  that  we  have 
not  to  search  for  Him  with  all  our  heart 
and  all  our  soul  and  all  our  mind,  if 
haply  we  may  find  Him.  On  the  con- 
trary. He  only  comes  to  us  out  of  a 
great  heart-hunger  and  need,  an  infinite 
lonorin«:  that  will  not  be  stilled,  and  that 
nothing  else,  nothing  less,  can  satisfy  or 
fill,  —  a  deep  experience  of  life,  of  human 


190 


THE   TASK  OF  JUDAISM. 


joy  and  sorrow,  that  brings  with  it  the 
knowledge  that  because  we   have  Him 
not  we  die,  and  that  in  Him  alone  we 
truly  live.     Such  knowledge  is  life  eter- 
nal, a  knowing  which  is  a  being  with 
God  that  rests  the  soul  and  lifts  it  above 
mortal   conditions.     For    this    came    we 
into  the  world,  for  this  do  we  leave  the 
world  in  order  that  we  may  know  eternal 
life,  — life    ever    more   abundant;    rest, 
deep   rest   after   weariness;  joy   beyond 
pain,    love   stronger    than    death, —the 
joy  of  which  Jesus  spoke  when  he  had 
drained  the  cup  of  sorrow  to  the  dreo-s  • 
the   peace   that   comes  of  perfect  trust, 
perfect  faith,  perfect  oneness  with  the 
Father.     "Peace  I  leave  with  you,  my 
peace  I  give  unto  you ;  not  as  the  world 
giveth.  ...  In  the  world  ye  shall  have 
tribulation  ;  but  be  of  good  cheer,  I  have 
overcome  the  world." 

Teach  us  thus  to  know  God,  0  teachers 


THE    TASK   OF  JUDAISM.  191 

of  Israel  who  starve  us  on  dry  liiisks  and 
formulas!  It  is  for  this  we  have  been 
preserved;  it  is  for  this  we  are  now 
scattered  as  the  winds  of  heaven  that 
nothing;  can  hold  or  bind.  Make  us  to 
drink  of  living  waters,  to  love  and  be 
loved  of  Him  who  is  the  living  God,  — the 
God  of  the  living  and  not  of  the  dead,  the 
loving  Father  of  all.  Take  away  the  re- 
proach of  our  people.  '^  Wherefore  should 
the  heathen  say,  where  is  now  their 
God  ?  But  our  God  is  in  the  heavens ; 
He  hath  done  whatsoever  He  hath 
pleased."  He  hath  bound  and  He  can 
loose.  Our  God  is  in  the  earth,  let  all 
the  world  rejoice.  "  Let  everything  that 
hath  breath  praise  the  Lord."  "  So  shall 
we  not  die  but  live,  and  declare  the  works 
of  the  Lord." 


March,  1895. 


EPILOGUE. 

/^F  these  essays,  now  for  the  first 
time  collected  and  published  in 
book  form,  the  first  appeared  in  the 
"Century  Magazine"  of  January,  1892  ; 
the  second,  "  The  Outlook  of  Judaism," 
was  written  for  the  World's  Parliament 
of  Religions,  and  read  before  the  Parlia- 
ment in  Chicago,  September  16th,  1893. 
The  others  were  published  successively 
in  the  "Jewish  Messenger,"  during  the 
following  eighteen  months,  and  were,  to 
some  extent,  answers  to  Jewish  critics 
and  exponents  who  dissented  from  my 
views.  In  offering  them  now  to  a  larger 
public,  I  feel  that  an  added  word  of  ex- 
planation is  necessary. 


EPILOGUE.  193 

Hitherto  I  have  addressed  myself  al- 
most entirely  to  a  Jewish  public.  It 
will  be  seen,  I  think,  that  I  have  told 
the  truth  as  I  have  seen  it,  sparing  and 
concealing  nothing,  making  no  apology, 
no  justification,  for  my  people,  no  appeal 
to  any  but  themselves.  For  I  have  wished 
especially  to  lay  stress  upon  the  fact,  that 
upon  the  Jews  themselves  rests  the  chief 
responsibility  of  their  position,  the  throw- 
ing off  of  disabilities,  the  working  out  of 
their  high  destiny.  Whatever  the  atti- 
tude of  the  Christians,  however  unjust, 
however  unhuman,  however  un-Christian 
it  may  appear  to  us,  all  the  more  the 
Jew  has  it  in  his  power  to  rise  superior 
to  it,  to  prove  himself  master  and  con- 
queror of  his  fate,  when  once  he  realises 
that  redress  lies  within  himself,  that  free- 
dom and  salvation  are  in  his  own  hands. 

But  this  is  not  to  say  that  there  is  no 
other  side  to  the  question,  no  other  help 

13 


194  EPILOGUE. 

to  its  solution ;  that  the  Christians  on 
their  part  have  not  a  responsibility  still 
more  grave,  —  the  responsibility  of  a 
wrong  done  instead  of  a  wrong  suffered, 
and  therefore  a  duty  still  more  plain,  a 
redress  still  more  urgent.  Leroy  Beau- 
lieu  says,  '^  Hatred  of  the  Jews  is  inspired 
not  by  Christian  sentiment,  but  b}^  anti- 
Christian  instincts."  In  other  words, 
anti-Semitism  is  anti-Christianity.  Who- 
ever takes  it  up  is  false  to  the  very  prin- 
ciples he  would  uphold,  denies  the  very 
truth  he  would  proclaim,  and  for  the 
lack  of  which  he  persecutes  the  Jew. 
Not  in  the  name  of  Judaism,  but  in  the 
name  of  Christianity  dishonoured  and 
defaced,  not  the  Jews  therefore,  but 
those  who  truly  call  tliem selves  Chris- 
tians, should  protest  against  anti-Semi- 
tism. "  There  are  in  the  world  to-day 
seven  or  eight  million  Jews  dispersed 
amon.o;  four  or  five  hundred  million  Chris- 


EPILOGUE.  195 

tians  or  Moslems.  We  are  apt  to  imag- 
ine," Leroy  Beaulieu  goes  on  to  say, 
"  that  the  great  majority  of  the  Jews 
of  the  world,  or  at  least  of  Europe,  are 
in  possession  of  civil  liberty  and  equality. 
This  is  a  mistake.  The  Israelites  who 
enjoy  civic  rights  are  still  in  a  minority. 
The  greater  number  of  the  descendants 
of  Abraham  are  still  subjected  to  restric- 
tive laws.  It  may  be  true  that  this  is 
mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  Russia  alone 
contains  more  than  half  the  Jews  of  the 
globe ; "  but  it  is  also  true  that  even  in 
the  most  enlightened  countries  the  Jew 
is  under  some  sort  of  ban,  whether  moral 
or  social,  subject  to  some  law  of  ex- 
ception or  exclusion,  some  disadvantage, 
some  estrangement  from  his  Christian 
neighbour. 

Now,  again,  whatever  the  attitude  of 
the  Jews,  whether  or  not  their  disabili- 
ties are  inherent  in  themselves,  I  hold 


196  EPILOGUE. 

that  this  fact  alone  is  a  blot  on  Chris- 
tianity, a  failure  on  the  part  of  a  religion 
claiming  to  be  the  religion  of  equality 
and  fraternity,  and  standing,  as  Chris- 
tianity does  to  Judaism,  in  the  relation 
of  a  religion  to  its  parent  religion,  the 
religion  which  has  given  it  birth,  and  to 
which  the  world  owes  so  vast  a  debt  as 
it  does  to  Judaism.  Dean  Milman,  the 
eminent  historian  of  the  Jews,  says : 
"  The  religious  obligations  of  mankind 
to  the  Jews  it  is  impossible  to  appreciate 
in  all  their  fulness."  And  another  Chris- 
tian authority.  Professor  D.  G.  Lyon,  of 
Harvard  University,  in  his  address  be- 
fore the  World's  Parliament  of  Religions, 
in  enumerating  these  obligations  makes 
so  striking  a  statement  that  he  seems  to 
cover  almost  the  whole  field  of  civilisa- 
tion :  "  What  has  the  Jew  given  us  ?"  he 
asks.  "  He  has  given  us  the  Bible,  the 
Old  as  well  as  the  New  Testament,  which. 


EPILOGUE.  107 

with  the  exception  of  one  or  possibly  two 
of  its  books,  was  written  by  men  of  Jewish 
birtli.  .  .  .  Along  with  the  Sacred  Writ- 
ings have  come  to  the  race  through  the 
Jews,  certain  great  doctrines — Monothe- 
isnij  —  God's  moral  government  of  the 
^orld,  —  His  fatherhood,  the  brotherhood 
of  man,  and  the  great  types  of  humanity, 
Abraham,  Moses,  Jeremiah,  Paul.  Jesus 
himself  was  a  Jew ;  and  Christianity  then, 
the  religion  which  bears  His  name,  is  it 
also  a  Jewish  institution  ?  It  has  elements 
which  are  not  Jewish  ;  it  has  passed  into 
the  keeping  of  those  who  are  not  Jews ; 
but  its  earliest  advocates  and  disciples,  no 
less  than  its  founder,  were  Jews.  The 
first  churches  were  Jewish.  The  chief 
ordinances  of  the  church,  the  service,  the 
prayers,  still  bear  the  stamp  of  their 
Jewish  origin  ;  and  the  Christian  chari- 
ties are  but  the  embodiment  of  the  Golden 
Rule  as  uttered  by  a  Jew.   .   .   .  LsraeFs 


198  EPILOGUE. 

mission  is  peace,  morality,  and  religion  ; 
or,  better  still,  Israel's  mission  is  peace 
through  morality  and  religion.  This, 
the  nation's  lesson  to  the  world;  this, 
the  spirit  of  the  greatest  characters  in 
Israel's  history.  To  live  in  the  same 
spirit;  in  a  word,  to  become  like  the 
foremost  of  all  Israelites,  —  this  is  the 
highest  that  any  man  has  yet  ventured 
to  hope.'' 

There  is  a  saying  of  the  Rabbis,  "  AYe 
men  judge  nations  and  classes  too  often 
only  by  the  bad  examples  they  produce ; 
God  judges  them  by  their  best  and  noblest 
types."  If  Israel  be  so  judged  then,  it 
were  to  make  him  the  type  and  pattern 
of  humanity.  But  I  do  not  ask  this.  I 
do  not  ask  you  thus  to  judge  my  people. 
Take  us  at  our  worst,  as  outcast  and  de- 
spised and  rejected  of  men,  — unto  such 
above  all  comes  the  Christ,  and  so  only 
can  you  prove  your  Christianity.     ^' He 


EPILOGUE.  199 

that  saitli  lie  is  in  the  light  and  hateth 
his  brother,  is  in  darkness  even  until 
now."  "  He  that  loveth  his  brother 
abideth  in  the  light,  and  there  is  none 
occasion  of  stumbling  in  him."  Come 
to  us  not  with  fire  and  sword,  with  tor- 
ture of  the  Inquisition,  as  you  have  come 
to  us  in  the  past ;  not  with  chapter  and 
book  and  doctrine  and  text,  as  some  are 
ready  to  come  to  us  now,  not  with  the 
letter,  but  the  spirit  —  with  love  in  your 
heart ;  love  that  redeems  and  transforms 
and  transfigures,  that  takes  away  the 
sins  of  the  world,  blessing  him  that  gives 
and  him  that  takes ;  the  love  that  is  not 
in  word,  neither  in  tongue,  but  in  deed 
and  in  truth.  "  For  hereby  do  we  know 
that  ye  are  of  the  truth." 

1.  "  Day   long   I   brooded    upon   the 
Passion  of  Israel. 

2.  I  saw   him    bound    to    the    wheel, 


200  EPILOGUE. 

nailed  to  the  cross,  cut  off  by  the  sword, 
burned  at  the  stake,  tossed  into  the  seas. 

3.  And  always  the  patient,  resolute 
martyr  face  arose  in  silent  rebuke  and 
defiance. 

4.  A  Prophet  with  four  eyes;  wide- 
gazed  the  orbs  of  the  spirit  above  the 
sleeping  eyelids  of  the  senses. 

5.  A  Poet,  who  plucked  from  his  bosom 
the  quivering  heart  and  fashioned  it  into 
a  lyre. 

6.  A  placid-browed  Sage,  uplifted  from 
earth  in  celestial  meditation. 

7.  These  I  saw,  with  princes  and 
people  in  their  train;  the  monumental 
dead,  and  the  standard-bearers  of  the 
future. 

8.  And  suddenly  I  heard  a  burst  of 
mocking  laughter  ;  and  turning,  I  beheld 
the  shuffling  gait,  the  ignominious  feat- 
ures, the  sordid  mask  of  the  son  of  the 
Ghetto." 


EPILOGUE.  201 

Turn  again,  0  daughter  of  Israel,  my 
sister,  and  behold  with  divinely  awakened 
eyes  the  son  of  man,  the  man  of  sorrows 
and  acquainted  with  grief.  "  Inasmuch  as 
ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the  least  of 
these  my  brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto 
me."  Who  has  ever  spoken  words  so 
tender  and  close,  so  fulfilled  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man  ?  "  And  I,  if  I  be 
lifted,  will  draw  all  men  up  unto  me." 

Be  ye  then  uplifted,  ye  who  would 
uplift.  Ye  who  come  in  his  name  and 
yet  deny  him,  with  Christ  on  your  lips 
but  with  hatred  and  scorn  in  your  heart, 
behold  the  suffering  child  of  God,  your 
brother;  behold  our  divine  humanity 
crushed  beneath  the  burden  of  the  flesh, 
the  sins  and  sorrows  of  the  world  !  Ye 
who  would  bear  witness  to  his  spirit  and 
his  truth,  to  the  Christ  that  is  within 
you,  look  with  the  eyes  of  Christ,  the 
heart  of  Christ ;    pierce  with   illumined 


202  EPILOGUE. 

vision  the  hollow  mask ;  let  the  warm 
rays,  the  gentle  touch  of  love,  fall  upon 
the  dull  clod  of  clay,  and  awake  the 
sleeping  soul,  the  higher,  the  divine  self 
that  slumbers  in  every  child  of  earth, 
every  one  of  God's  creatures,  —  the  Christ 
that  is  to  be,  when  all  men  know  them- 
selves as  he  knew,  one  with  the  Father 
and  one  with  his  fellow-man, 

March,  1895. 


THE    END. 


DATE    DUE 

v*^^^ 

- 

'  1  ; .  , 

v( ^/V'    - ■   "■" 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  US  A. 

